Parents of Paige Gibbons, a college freshman at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York in 2022, reveal that the 19-year-old died that year after ingesting what she thought was Percocet but turned out to be fentanyl.
Gibbons and her friend popped the pills in November 2022. They both believed they were taking a Percocet.
“She was at a friend’s house, the parents were home, she and her friend were going to take a Percocet, which she thought was a Percocet,” David Gibbons, Paige’s father, said in an interview with New York’s Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS).
“Unbeknownst to them, it was not a Percocet. It was 100% fentanyl,” he added.
Gibbons said he learned of his daughter’s fate when a police officer knocked on his door hours later to inform him that Paige died of a drug overdose. He recalled hearing his wife screaming in response to the news.
“It was the loudest yell I’d heard in my life,” David said. “I thought it was an intruder or something because why was she screaming?”
Paige had been with two friends at the time of the incident, one of whom purchased the pill on social media. One friend nearly died of an overdose while the other friend declined to take the pill.
“She trusted, maybe, her friend or her friend trusted somebody that they knew,” said Paige’s mother, Kate. “We just thought of her as a little naive in that respect. Unfortunately, it cost her her life.”
David said that his daughter was not a serial drug abuser, adding that her “one mistake” destroyed her life.
“One mistake was obviously Paige’s worst mistake in her whole life,” David said. “We don’t want her to be judged for the worst mistake she made.”
Paige’s family finally came forward with the story 18 months after her death to warn the broader public.
“I can’t believe that we still hear people, you know, having this same exact situation,” Kate said. “I want to shout it from the mountaintops and make sure that everyone knows: Expect that it will happen to you; expect that you will die if you try this.”
“It doesn’t discriminate,” David said. “Socioeconomically, race, religion. You take a pill, and you have a potential of dying that night.”
According to the New York Post, ” Some 6,300 New Yorkers died of fentanyl overdoses in 2023, and 74,702 died nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
“The opioid is 50 times more powerful than heroin and can be fatal even in trace amounts,” it continued. “The Drug Enforcement Agency set a record in 2023 seizing 79.5 million fentanyl pills — more than 20 million more pills than the total amount seized in 2022.”
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