On a recent Saturday night and with the kids in a relative’s care, Cory Bruce and his wife, Michelle Eynouf, decided to have an “adult night.”
Before heading to the house for some rum drinks and to watch the Rams game, they stopped at a gas station near Glenstone Avenue and Division Street.
They planned to get a pack of cigarettes, Eynouf said, but after making a spur-of-the-moment decision, her husband purchased a small packet of what he thought was heroin.
Less than an hour later, both were unconscious from a suspected opioid overdose.
Eynouf, who said she took a small taste of the drug and knew something was wrong, was released from the hospital the following day.
Bruce, who used more of the drug despite protests from Eynouf, never regained consciousness and died on Nov. 25 after five days in the ICU at Mercy.
Eynouf, with Cory Bruce’s sisters and his mother by her side, spoke with the News-Leader two days before her husband’s funeral.
“I don’t want him to have died in vain,” Eynouf said, wiping away tears.
Older sister Quincy Bruce nodded.
“He would want us to do this for him,” Quincy Bruce said. “I just want his story told. I want there to be awareness.”
Though toxicology reports are not back yet, it appears Cory Bruce overdosed on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is often mixed with or sold as heroin to increase potency and profit.
Dealers often do not know or do not tell buyers about the fentanyl.
Though it is cheaper and easier to make (it is man-made, so there is no need for a crop of poppy plants), fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin.
Family members are adamant there is no way Cory Bruce would have knowingly bought fentanyl.
Source: Springfield News Leader