A Mother’s Love: Family recalls ten days of agony and loss

July 21, 2018 was a day Britney Jones will never forget.

It was the day her brother, Justice Enlow, died from a fentanyl overdose.

“He was a very very hard worker. He had an amazing heart,” Jones described. “I had no idea that he was using.”

It was a fate many of his family members, like Jones, never saw coming. Her sister, Sarah Enlow, said she didn’t recognize any signs of an addiction. She had fought her own battle for more than a decade, and quit earlier that year.

“It’s hard when you almost feel guilty when you use for so long, and you’re alive, and somebody with such a short span uses and they’re gone like that,” she said, amid a backdrop of baby items. Her daughter, Aria, was expected in a few weeks.

It fell to Jones to make what she said was the hardest phone call of her life: to tell her mother that her youngest child had passed away.

“She let out the most blood curdling scream I’ve ever heard in my life,” Jones recalled, “The line went dead.”

The family buried the 21-year-old’s body in Myrtle Beach and picked up some of his personal items to take back with them. Nothing elaborate, just clothes, jewelry, his wallet and cell phone.

Jones and Sarah Enlow departed for their homes in Columbia. Their mother, Kimberly Enlow, went to Savannah, GA to clear her mind.

Things took another turn a few days later, on July 31, 2018. The first sign something wasn’t right was when Jones called Enlow as the mother waited for her bus to leave from Savannah.

“She told me that she felt very weird, that she was feeling kind of woozy, that she was feeling loopy,” Jones said.

The second call happened while the bus was on I-95. Jones said her mother sounded totally normal, and wanted to take a nap. Her third call, 90 minutes later, wasn’t answered. A few hours later, Jones’ phone rang. It was her mother’s number, but a man’s voice on the other end of the line.

“As soon as I heard [his] voice, I knew what had happened,” Jones explained.

She said earlier, her mother had mentioned going through Justice’s wallet and finding a powdery residue.

“Whether smelling it or trying to taste test it, whatever it was ended up getting into her system,” Jones said.

According to the autopsy, that residue was fentanyl, a substance so powerful it takes a tiny fraction of a gram to kill an adult. Jones said she knew who gave her brother the drugs, but her efforts to get investigators to move forward with the case have gone nowhere.

“I’ve got a lot of fact towards the fact that they’re still out there and they’re still dealing things that’s literally killing people every single day,” she said.

Solicitor Jimmy Richardson said text messages aren’t enough to convict someone for dealing drugs. Meanwhile, the sisters have a warning for those who hear their story. To families who are also dealing with addiction, Sarah Enlow asks them to have faith.

“Don’t give up on them,” she said. “Do everything you can to help them because it will all be worth it in the end.”

As for everyone else, Jones wants them to be aware of the dangers of this substance, which could be hiding as a residue on any surface.

“Every single time I’m in a public place, and I open a door or I’m loading my kids into a shopping cart, I think, it could be anywhere,” she said.

You can watch the family’s story, “A Mother’s Love,” in the video above.