WSET.com - ABC13Prescription Drug Overdose Kills Pittsylvania County Teen

Reporter: James Gherardi l Videographer: Jonathan Merryman

Dry Fork, VA - Prescription pain killers can be extremely addicting, and if taken in excess they can also be deadly. One Southside teen lost his battle with that addiction.

His mother says after her son died of a prescription drug overdose back in September, it has been nearly impossible to get any answers. She's been left wondering how her son got the drugs and even worse, if the same person who gave them to him continues to give to others.

Shelley Crabb's son Jacob wasn't even 15.

"Around 8 o'clock I think, the phone rang. And my Momma was hollering and screaming. She said that he had laid down and she went to check on him, and she said she had found him in his bed and he had vomited and aspirated, and he was dead," said Crabb.

Jacob died after overdosing on a combination of the pain killer oxycodone and cold medicine.

"To me this is a murder case, my child was murdered," she said.

Crabb says it all started when Jacob got in with the wrong crowd. Jacob was the last stop on his bus ride home from school. And every day for months, his driver would stop at the Raceway in Tightsqueeze. Shelley later came to find out it is within walking distance of a supposed drug dealer's house.

Shelley discovered her son had a secret addiction and that he had become close friends with the son of a supposed drug dealer.

"I had a ziplock bag of pipes and things that were handmade and I called... nobody would come get them," she said.

Crabb said she tried calling the Pittsylvania County Sheriff's Department, but every time she called, they would tell her she needed to "speak to an investigator or needed to speak to the deputy that was there that night and nobody would talk to me."

Finally months after Jacob's death, Crabb took matters into her own hands, notifying the commonwealth's attorney herself and prompting an investigation. She says now her battle is with other parents, convincing them the same thing can happen to their family.

"Not my kid, you know? I didn't think it would happen to my kid either," said Crabb.

The Pittsylvania County Sheriff's Office did not return our phone calls. Jacob was enrolled in a Private School in Danville, not Pittsylvania County Schools. Crabb says she doesn't know why that driver would stop every day in Tightsqueeze.