He was extremely,
extremely witty and funny.
I mean mature humor from the
time he was like 5 or 6.
And by his sophomore year of high school,
his mother says Griffin Hoffman had
grown into a teenage tennis star.
A young adult with a big heart who
was still a kid at heart. I miss
every last thing about him.
It's really difficult to talk about
when when you're talking about your son.
Wants the world to know about
the anxiety Griffin suffered.
Like so many teens during the
pandemic experimenting with cannabis,
then prescription pills.
I also had many conversations
with him and so did his dad about.
About the dangers you know he.
He knew there are a few
things you never ever do, but
it sounds like you wanted him to
talk to you about all of this
definitely. And we made it very clear
like you're not gonna get in trouble.
This is what it matters. This discussion.
Then on a Monday morning in March,
a school day, Griffin's
father went to wake him up.
His dad threw open the my bedroom
door and said Carrie get up
something's wrong with with Griffin.
The first thing I saw was his hand
because his dad was holding it
trying to find a pulse and there
was no pulse and it was just blue.
Did you already
have a sense about what might
have happened? I figured.
In the beginning that he took something,
he must have taken something and not known.
And right away they found. Those blue pills
pills like these that carry
would later find out looked like
oxycodone but were counterfeit,
made with something 100 times
stronger than morphine. Fentanyl,
my kid, wasn't an addict.
You know, he was just doing normal
experimentation like any other kid,
he was just like a regular teenager.
The fact that it happened to my kid is.
Evidence that it could happen to
anybody's kid in a lot of ways.
Investigators say they were able
to trace back who those very pills
came from from a street dealer
that handed them to Griffin,
then up two levels to a 24 year
old alleged drug trafficker.
They call a merchant of death.
A federal indictment naming him as
Manuel Antonio Sousa Espinoza of
Vancouver caught in late March with this
bag of fentanyl pills and a firearm,
investigators say.
During an operation with a lower
level dealer who cooperated
Espinosa facing 20 years to life,
if convicted court filings read
for selling fentanyl that resulted
in the death of a child,
the defendants lawyer did not
respond to a request for comment.
We asked the District Attorney
who was the last person who knew.
What these things were and that they could?
That probably might kill.
And they told us every last one
really. Yeah, last year alone we had
11 deaths in the state of Oregon from
young people under the age of 18.
And while US attorney Scott
Ozog declined to discuss the
specifics of Griffin's case,
the explosion in Oregon of the
synthetic drug that's easier to
transport and cheaper to make means
his office is battling an epidemic.
We can't prosecute our
way out of these cases.
What's important is that kids
understand that young people
understand that what they're taking
has the high potential to kill them.
Please make sure that you
are not taking these pills.
They are designed to look like Oxy,
which is why the principal at Griffin School,
McDaniel High in Northeast Portland, posted
a plea a day after the 16 year old died.
We're going to take the pills from you.
We will not be asking any
questions. The grief is
going to stay. This for a very long
time. What have you personally learned over
the last few months?
It wasn't clear the level of the danger
and how prevalent they are and what
our students potentially and what
the Community is potentially buying.
If you're buying anything on the street,
it's fentanyl, and now it's much
more clear, much more clear,
and that's in part due to a
flurry of public health warnings
issued to show color aside,
that prescription pills on the
left here and counterfeit fentanyl
on the right can look nearly.
Identical with experts pointing out,
it takes just a few grains
less than the tip of a pencil.
To prove fatal
when we're seeing people OD on
half a pill sometimes, potentially
even a quarter of a pill, and
Lieutenant Chris Lindsey with
Portland police, narcotics
and organized crime shows us.
I mean, this is pretty typical for how
it's all shipped up in bulk like this.
The surge has grown so great
this section of this vault is dedicated
exclusively to fentanyl storage
in their secure drug faults.
Fentanyl has its own section
of these are counterfeit oxycodone pills,
and they're all marked evidence.
They all say suspected fentanyl or fentanyl.
There's a lot here.
How many pills in here,
probably hundreds of thousands,
probably hundreds of thousands
in 2021. Portland police say they
secured over 300,000 confirmed or
suspected fentanyl pills in the
first five months of this year.
They've already brought in 90% of
last year's totals with teens.
An easy target.
Apps like Facebook,
Snapchat and Telegram are huge.
We're seeing it on the dark web.
As well, this is very preliminary.
We're starting to see them come
in the form of counterfeit Xanax.
Now that little white Xanax bars.
This stuff is dangerous.
This is what it looks like,
and it can kill you.
There's no, there's no redemption.
I mean the worst thing in
the world happened to me.
The worst thing in the world that every
parent's biggest fear is what happened.
The reality of her son's death,
still so raw. Kerry can't
bear to look at pictures.
Yeah, I can't. Instead,
this mother finding her memories
and comfort in an enduring symbol
of his life. I got a tattoo of
a Griffin to commemorate him.
Yeah, my life pulse, you know.
Had the biggest heart. I
mean he cared so much about people.
That's what I want. I want people
to remember his humor and his heart.