MT. CARMEL, Tenn. (WJHL) — Josh Russell was hoping he could get free of drug addiction for good when he went home from a stint in jail late last year.
He got a job, hung out with his parents and sister and was working hard to try and lose weight.
But on Feb. 7, Marsha Way and her husband found Way’s 41-year-old son — dressed for his job at a Johnson City manufacturing plant — unconscious in the bathroom.
I tried to do CPR,” Way, a nurse, told News Channel 11 Friday, just days after what would have been Russell’s 42nd birthday. “Tried all I could do but he was gone.”
Intent on losing weight, Russell had started using methamphetamine when he couldn’t get a prescription for the weight-loss drug phentermine. But it wasn’t the meth that killed him.
“When we got the autopsy back it was a drug laced with fentanyl, and he had seven times the amount, the lethal amount,” Way said.