On Wednesday, September 5, Angela Kennecke, a veteran news anchor in South Dakota, opened up on air about the death of her daughter Emily, who died in May due to an opioid overdose.
Kennecke, 52, has worked at CBS affiliate KELO-TV for 29 years.
On May 16, Kennecke’s 21-year-old daughter Emily died of an overdose. Her official cause of death was fentanyl poisoning. The last time Kennecke spoke to her daughter was three days prior on May 13, Mother’s Day.
According to the pathologist, Emily had more than six times the recommended medical amount of fentanyl which would be required for an adult male. Kennecke said her daughter was killed almost instantly.
via CBS News:
“I thought I can let this loss, this devastation, destroy me or I can do something about it. And over the course of my career I have asked so many parents to talk to me and just people in general who are grieving who have had horrible, tragic things happen to them …and I thought, I have to talk about it. I have an obligation to talk about it. My number one reason for talking about it is to erase the stigma that is surrounding addiction, especially the use of heroin, opioids,” Kennecke told “CBS This Morning” on Friday.
The number of Americans dying from drug overdoses is dramatically increasing. The CDC estimates overdoses killed more than 72,000 people last year and it has become the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50. Emily struggled with addiction for more than a year, though Kennecke had no idea the drug was heroin. She says she tried to get her daughter treatment, but was too late.
“It was the most shocking thing to me. Needles. Middle-class kid, privileged, you know all these opportunities,” Kennecke said. “I just feel so compelled to let everybody know what happened to my daughter can happen to you, can happen to your child.”
Following her daughter’s death, Kennecke launched Emily’s Hope, a fund in her daughter’s name to help people pay for the cost of treatment.
You can find the link to Emily’s Hope here.
