Loved ones spell out how, why kids are abusing heroin, dangerous drugs

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Naperville Police Community Affairs officer Sgt. Gregg Bell opens a can Thursday at the Naperville Police Station that contains heroin evidence that was confiscated during a drug arrest. The drug items pictured are old evidence marked for destruction. |

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Updated: October 15, 2011 10:42PM

Ryan Warner, 17

Indian Plains High School in Indian Prairie School District

Died: July 6, 2011

Several days after his 17th birthday, Warner was found dead on his patio, having suffered an apparent overdose. Friends with Warner that evening describe their friend as alive and well at the time they left for home. What transpired between that point and Warner’s death remains unknown. Raphe Marsden was Warner’s best friend, and has spoken candidly about his friend’s death, and the drug problem plaguing Naperville.

He continues to mourn Warner’s passing.

“It’s good to have his Facebook still,” Marsden said. “I can go back and look at the last conversations we had this summer.”

Raphe Marsden

“just layed in my bed this morning knowing i couldnt call you to chill man this is really weird dude i cant handle it”

September 28 at 1:35pm

Raphe Marsden

“missing 5 important people in my life, R.I.P.”

September 16 at 1:17pm

Raphe Marsden

“:( i still cant believe your gone i love you so much R.I.P.”

July 26 at 11:58am

**********************************************************************

Jon Betten, 17

Neuqua Valley High School

Died: July 1, 2011

According to Jon’s sister, Sam, the teen had snuck out of the family’s Naperville home to meet up with friends during the early morning hours of July 1. He never came home. Jon was found unresponsive in a friend’s basement after a night of drinking and using over the counter drugs, Sam said. Since then, the family has heard numerous tales spun from the kids with him at the time he died.

“There are so many stories, we’re not sure what the truth is,” she said.

But the truth won’t change the fact that Jon is gone, and that life right now is hard for Sam Betten.

“i know your looking down on me and telling me you love me,” she wrote on his memorial page. “i will keep moving forward for you baby brother i promise.”

Sam Betten

“i cried a little today for you.... i dont wanna go home.not yet! then i have to walk by your room and remember your gone”

July 26 at 10:23pm

Sam Betten

“go hug your siblings and tell them you love them cause u never know when they will be gone RIP BABY BROTHER”

July 11 at 8:24am

Sam Betten

“YOUR COMING HOME YOUR COMING HOME i need you to come home... but your not.. RIP baby brother”

July 2 at 7:57pm

“How can someone so full of life vanish so fast?” --18-year-old Sam Betten.

Posted to Facebook on July 19, 2010, 1:10 a.m.

It was a question hundreds of Naperville teens lamented over this summer as they buried several friends: How did this happen, and why? To some, the answer was clear.

“Everyone wants to get messed up so quickly,” Raphe Marsden, 20, said when discussing the alleged heroin overdose of his best friend Ryan Warner, 17. “No one wants to be sober in Naperville. They’ll do anything to be (high).”

Whether they’re driving to Chicago to cop heroin or taking a short trip to the pharmacy for a bottle of Robitussin, teens are going to great lengths for a buzz, said 18-year-old Sam Betten, whose brother Jon died this summer at the age of 17.

On July 1, Jon Betten was found unresponsive in the basement of a friend’s home. Jon had been drinking and using over the counter drugs in the hours leading up to his death, Sam said. The mistake would cost him his life.

When it comes to drugs, “It’s not an under-the-table thing anymore,” Sam Betten said. “It’s a ‘Hey, this is fun. Let’s party’ type of situation.” — especially in Naperville.

“The truth is, there’s a lot of drug trafficking going on in Naperville,” she said. “Think about how wealthy it is.”

Marsden agreed.

Ryan Warner had been using heroin for less than a year at the time of his death. It was a habit that disturbed Marsden deeply, but one he could do nothing about. Even drug rehabilitation wouldn’t save his friend who was using again just weeks after his release from Rosecrance in Rockford.

“Heroin is everywhere,” Marsden said. “You might have to drive to get it, but you’ll have no problem doing that.”

*********************

From Kane to Kendall to Will and Dupage counties, the problem has run rampant, teens said. And you don’t have to look far for proof. Not only are drug users killing themselves, but others.

Kendall County Sheriff’s deputies determined a Yorkville man was driving under the influence of heroin and texting when he crossed the center earlier this year, killing a man.

In late August, a 23-year-old Lake in the Hills man was charged with drug-induced homicide for allegedly selling heroin to a 24-year-old man on Jan. 29, a day before he overdosed and died.

Philip D. Neumann, 23, of the 100 block of Deer Path could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Others have been charged for selling or trafficking the narcotics.

Kane County deputies seized more than $2 million in heroin following an Elgin traffic stop in April. The drugs were being trafficked from Mexico into Illinois where they would be dispersed for teens to buy. A month earlier, two Aurora men, ages 22 and 24, were pulled over with 154 packets of heroin in their vehicle. Police said they made the stop on Route 59 near Ferry Road because the driver was suspected of transporting heroin from the Chicago area.

But if you ask those still in shock from a loved one’s overdose, teens don’t have to drive to the city for a high.

Other deadly drugs can be found as close as the family room of your son’s school buddy. Marsden says teens get their money for heroin from their jobs or parents — or by purchasing the drugs and reselling them to friends or classmates.

And as far as other highs, says Sam Betten, there’s always the bathroom medicine cabinet or local Walgreens.

*********************

Jon Betten wasn’t hooked on heroin when he died, but he didn’t need to be in order to lose his life chasing a high, his sister said.

“These are things that people can get their hands on so easily,” she said, while speaking publicly for the first time about her brother’s death. “You can get Robitussin from the drug store, and you can get high off of it, and you can kill yourself from that. People think it’s a joke.”

But it’s no laughing matter. Kids are dying and no one is doing a thing about it, she said.

Jon knew the dangers of his lifestyle, and had seen several friends pass away prior to his own death.

“He saw the consequences, and he didn’t do anything about it,” Sam said.

She said that continues to be the case in the Naperville area, despite the recent onslaught of heroin and other drug-related deaths.

“There were people who knew Jon who said, ‘Let’s go celebrate his death and get high.’ It will continue until something bad happens to them,” she said.

Sam and her pastor are hoping they can reverse this pattern.

“We’re starting a group for teens. We want them to know that you don’t have to be high to be happy,” she said. “The consequences could result in your death.”

*********************

On Facebook, Sam’s grief plays out like a drama for the world to see.

“Just woke up crying. I miss you with all my heart,” she recently wrote, speaking to her brother the only way she can.

Other teens vented their frustrations online, as well.

“If I could eliminate the greatest enemy to our kind I would do it with the greatest vengeance and fury,” said Katelyn Cernigila, who lost her Waubonsie Valley High School boyfriend to a heroin overdose. “(Expletive) U HEROIN, (expletive) YOU FOR TAKING AWAY MY BOYFRIEND, MY TRUE LOVE. AND (expletive) YOU FOR TAKING AWAY MORE FRIENDS OF MINE AND THERES NO WAY OF THEM RETURNING. I (expletive) HATE U. I HATE U.”

Marsden’s page echoes a similar tale of grief as he mourns the loss of Ryan Warner.

“I have lost a brother to me, lord help me on this day…please,” he wrote at 9:48 a.m., the morning police found Warner’s body.

Later, another message; “You meant the world to me, and I always tried my hardest to protect you.”

The fact he couldn’t save his friend hurts Marsden the most. Sam Betten feels the same way about her brother.

“You saved my life so many times, I just wish I could have saved yours,” she wrote to Jon on the day he died.

Today, she knows nothing would have made a difference.

“They have to learn on their own,” Sam said. “No matter how many times I preach and tell them not to do drugs, they are not going to listen.”

********************

The recent deaths of Warner, Betten and other teens continue to leave a massive number of teens reeling in the wake of such tragedy. At 20, Raphe Marsden has buried five friends. Warner’s death, however, struck him the hardest.

“Sitting in the backyard, just thinking about…how different my life is now (that) so many friends have passed away of mine,” Marsden wrote to Ryan Warner. “You were my life, man.”

And he wonders how much more he can take.

“I’m at that breaking point,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost someone else.”