Mom joins wrongful death suit against Snapchat

Daughter died in 2020 from fentanyl poisoning

BY TAYLER SHAW TSHAW@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

When Patti Lujan sees butter ies, she thinks of her daughter, Lauren, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 18.

A senior at Littleton High School at the time, Lauren died from fentanyl poisoning after taking a counterfeit Percocet she got through the social media app Snapchat.

As Lujan continues to cope with the loss of her daughter, she has now joined a legal ght against Snapchat, which she believes is partly responsible for her daughter’s death.

She is among nine families nationwide participating in a wrongful death lawsuit led by the Social Media Victims Law Center against Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat.

“I know she would want me to do this. She’d want me to get involved in this lawsuit and ght, and so I’m doing it,” Lujan said.

‘It’s time for me to speak up’

Sitting in her home in Centennial, surrounded by photos of her daughter, Lujan described Lauren’s many talents, from her beautiful singing voice to her athletic skills.

“People always say, you know, someone lit up a room. She really did,” Lujan said. “I feel blessed that she was in my life, even for a short time. She taught me a lot.”

Lauren lived with the mentality that she could accomplish whatever she put her mind to, her mom said. “One of the greatest things about Lauren is she just — she had such a big heart,” Lujan said. “She was amazing because she found the beauty in everything.” e next morning, on March 30, Lujan was working in her o ce, which is near Lauren’s father’s house. She remembered getting a phone call from Lauren’s father, who said he did not think Lauren was breathing and that she was dead.

On March 29, 2020, Lauren was on spring break and staying at her father’s house, according to the lawsuit. She left the house for a few hours, which is when her parents thought she met up with someone, whom she communicated with via Snapchat, to get the painkiller Percocet.

Lujan went to the house, where she saw paramedics and an ambulance.

“ ey wouldn’t let me in. So, I’m trying to, like, storm into the house to get to her and they wouldn’t let me in, which was horrible. And then I followed the ambulance to the hospital,” she said.

“Supposedly, she was alive when she went to the hospital,” Lujan recalled. “ ey kept coming in and telling me, ‘OK, well, we got a heartbeat.’ And it was like, ‘It’s really faint.’ And yeah — nightmare.” e National Institute on Drug Abuse explains on its website that when people overdose on fentanyl, their breathing can slow or stop, which decreases the amount of oxygen reaching the brain and can lead to death.

According to the lawsuit, the Percocet that Lauren took was a pill laced with fentanyl. Lauren died from fentanyl poisoning on March 30.

Song for Charlie is a national nonpro t that raises awareness about fake pills made of fentanyl. It argues that when someone dies after taking a fake pill made of fentanyl, these deaths should be classi ed as “poisoning” rather than “overdose” because the person did not know what they were ingesting.

It took Lujan a long time to nd out what had happened, she said.

“I don’t know if it was six months later, or nine months, or a year later, really, when I nally read the autopsy report and realized it was fentanyl, and that she took one Percocet and it was laced,” Lujan said.

“I didn’t really think much more about it because the grief and the sorrow is overwhelming. And for me, not thinking about it, not dealing with it, was my defense mechanism,” she said. “I was just trying to deal with, you know, coping with

A year ago, Lujan began wondering what happened with the police investigation. She contacted the Arapahoe County Sheri ’s O ce and spoke with someone who essentially said, “‘Once we realized it was (Snapchat), there was nothing more we could do,’” she recalled.

At that moment, she felt emotionally overwhelmed and was unable to think straight, she said.

“And so, I just let it go,” she said.

But then a friend told her it was time “to get angry about this,” Lujan recalled

One day, Lujan’s friend mentioned she heard on the news about the Social Media Victims Law Center and a lawsuit against Snapchat. Lujan did some research and reached out to the center

“I feel like it’s just time for me to not sit back anymore,” Lujan said. “It’s time for me to speak up.”

“I kind of look at it like she was murdered. And I’m upset because Snapchat doesn’t seem to do anything,” she said. “I almost feel like these drug dealers are protected behind Snapchat.” e nine minors and young adults

The fight against Snapchat e wrongful death lawsuit alleges that Snapchat created an environment that allows drug dealers to “operate in a manner that directly contributed to the deaths of nine minors and young adults,” according to a Social Media Victims Law Center news release.

Majekodunmi, Juan Jiménez Trujillo, Cole Brown, Michael Leonardi, Dylan Moore, Kevin Andrew Hutchings, Jaylen Penix and Allie Higdon. Each of these individuals died after taking fentanyl-laced pills and/ or edibles purchased from drug dealers connected to them by Snapchat, according to the news release.

“I want to be really clear — we don’t condone the sale of prescription drugs outside of a doctor’s prescription. We also understand that young people make bad decisions. ey don’t deserve to die for it,” said Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center.

A wrongful death lawsuit alleges that a person lost their life as the result of the misconduct of another, Bergman said.

“In this case, the negligent and unreasonably dangerous design of the Snapchat platform,” he said.

He noted that it does not mean there are no other factors at play, and while he acknowledges people should not use prescription drugs without a prescription, “that doesn’t mean that they needed to die for it.” e lawsuit alleges that Snapchat’s platform “purposefully

“And that doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate to absolve Snapchat of its responsibility for contributing to the situation that led to the child’s death,” he said.

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