One local man’s journey to becoming an opioid casualty | Local News

Bre Auna, 22, said she doesn’t feel angry about what happened anymore. She’s “just hurt” that her dad is gone, and that his death was preventable.

Barnes is now one of dozens who have been killed via drug overdoses over the past 18 months in Racine County. His death is a microcosm of the opioid epidemic, in which:

• Lawmakers search for a balance between punishing lawbreakers and protecting public health.
• The criminal justice system resorting to decades-old methods to deter drug dealing by charging drug dealers with homicide when death results.
• Addicts continue to face their demons, and families are left to grieve.

In this three-part series, The Journal Times will look at each of these issues, how they relate to Barnes, and how they continue to affect Racine County and the nation as a whole.

Racine County Medical Examiner Michael Payne said that there were 33 confirmed fatal overdoses between Jan. 1, 2018 and April 5, 2019. Twenty-seven of those overdoses are considered accidental, whereas the other six have been classified as suicides or undetermined.

Another six cases are waiting on test results, according to Payne, which could bump the total to as high as 39.

“There’s definitely more drug deaths now than there were in 2013 and 2014. That much is evident,” Payne said.

Barnes’ is considered “undetermined,” since he had reportedly told friends and family about contemplating suicide, although there was no indication he intentionally overdosed Feb. 3.

Fentanyl — a synthetic opioid considered to be 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin — is blamed for this increase and has become more popular with users over the past decade.

“Communities across Wisconsin and America have been devastated by the epidemic of opioid overdoses,” Johnson said in a statement.

Fentanyl was present in 17 of the county’s overdose deaths since the start of 2018. After fentanyl, cocaine and heroin are the next biggest causes of fatal overdoses in the county, according to Payne.

There was no fentanyl in Barnes’ system at the time of his death, according to toxicology reports. It appears he took a speedball — combining heroin and cocaine — in addition to alcohol and an anti-anxiety medication: diazepam, aka Valium.

Barnes left behind three adult children and four grandchildren. He was nearing retirement after nearly three decades as a welder with J.I. Case.

He often worked six or seven days a week and, near the end, Bre Auna said that her dad was “just tired.” In his final months, he seemed drained, worn down, spent.

At the time, he was living with several friends, including Lino Pagni, whom he met years ago when he was growing up in California, near the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.

Barnes, who had lived in Racine for about 30 years, invited Pagni to move in with him after Pagni’s dad died a couple years back. Pagni took him up on the offer, moving in in May 2016, a decision Pagni has come to regret.

Every day after work for the past few years, Barnes rarely wanted to do anything, according to Pagni. He would come home, grab a drink, watch “Seinfeld” reruns and — with increasing frequency — get high.

Pagni said he never actually saw his friend use any drugs besides alcohol because he is not a user himself. When Barnes would get high, he would do it in his bedroom or in the basement, he said.

By the time Barnes died, “I hardly ever talked to him anymore,” Pagni said, even though they still lived together. “I was really disgusted with him.”

According to Pagni, Barnes was doing OK — as in, he was still going to work and eating normally — until July 1, 2018: the day Kyle Rannow, Nikita Wallin and their three kids moved in.

That’s when Barnes started using heroin with more regularity and stopped buying food, according to Pagni. He fell four months behind on his mortgage and had missed gas and electricity payments. He also started missing work so often that Pagni thought Barnes had been fired, although that didn’t appear to be the case.

Pagni thinks there were two reasons Barnes didn’t kick Rannow and Wallin out: the first was sympathy for the struggling family, and the second was that disconnecting from them would dry up his drug connection.

According to police, Rannow and Wallin were getting high with Barnes when he overdosed Feb. 3. After Barnes fell unconscious, Pagni said that Wallin got him to call 911 before she, Rannow and a third man, Joseph Kelemen, fled in the hope of avoiding arrest.

Pagni said Wallin told him that Barnes had drank a fifth of vodka and taken a Xanax — an anti-anxiety medication, but not the one later found in Barnes’ system. According to Pagni, she neglected to mention the heroin and cocaine.

A police investigator later reported that Barnes’ body “appeared to be a healthy male with no obvious signs of trauma.”

His ex-wife, Leeann Barnes, who described Joseph as a protector, said that she had no idea that Joseph — who had dabbled with drugs in his younger days — had gotten hooked again until after the overdose.

“I didn’t know what was going on. It was behind closed doors,” Leeann told The Journal Times.

When Bre Auna thinks about her dad, she likes remembering sitting for hours in his living room with him and her two brothers, just talking.

Growing up, she remembers having a family dinner every night, no matter who was mad at who, and learning how to defend herself.

They didn’t live together in the final months, but Bre Auna visited often. She said that she suspected her dad might have been using again, but didn’t realize how bad it was.

“I was in shock, really,” she said of the moment paramedics told her that her dad wouldn’t be waking up.

Bre Auna said she has “been on autopilot” since February: “I’m just not really there mentally.”

She said she works two waitressing jobs. In her serving book, she always keeps a photo of her dad tucked away. Her current Facebook profile picture is a childhood family photo of her younger self, her little brother and her dad — all smiling.

Since Feb. 3, smiles have been hard to come by.