A mother fighting for change after losing her daughter to a fentanyl overdose travels to Sacramento to plead with lawmakers to do more to protect children.

Melanie Ramos’ mother filed a lawsuit against LAUSD, alleging the school district knew about the drug use on campus and did nothing to stop it. Now the mother is preparing to speak in front of the California Legislature in support of Melanie’s Law, which aims to prevent opioid and fentanyl overdoses in young people.

In September, 15-year-old Melanie Ramos was found dead in the girls’ bathroom at Helen Bernstein High School. It has been determined that he died of a fentanyl overdose. When she failed to show up for lunch that day, her family filed a missing person report.

Around 9 p.m. on the day Ramos died, a man called police after his daughter failed to return from school, according to LAPD. Her father went to high school to search the campus and found his daughter on the playground with an overdose.

The girl was able to tell her father that her friend had also overdosed and was still in the school bathroom. The man found a school employee who conducted a search to find the girl’s friend. When they entered one of the bathrooms, they found the second girl unconscious, it was Ramos.

When first responders arrived at the school, they pronounced Ramos dead. The other girl was rushed to hospital, then released after being treated.

Apache Junction police say a 3-year-old boy died after swallowing at least one fentanyl pill. The investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made to date.

Ramos’ family say the district hasn’t moved fast enough. They claim in a lawsuit that the school knew about illegal drug use on campus and did nothing to stop it.

Police say they believe the girls bought what they were told was Percocet, a prescription drug containing oxycodone and acetaminophen.

The girls purchased the drugs at Lexington Park, just south of Bernstein High on the same day. Police believe the pills the girls ingested were mixed with fentanyl.

Two other overdose victims were also found nearby on the same day, police said, and are believed to be part of the same case.

The day after the incident, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho visited Bernstein High School to meet with the Ramos family.

“Lexington Park is two blocks from this school,” Carvalho said. “Which means Lexington Park is two blocks away from hundreds of teenagers.”

He said the 15-year-old “died in that school because of a cold bathroom floor”.

“That shouldn’t be the case, not in this school. Not in a school in Los Angeles or in our whole country,” he said. “But that’s the situation we’re dealing with.

“To the individual who for apparently several weeks has been spreading pain, destruction and now death, rest assured that we will use the full weight and force of this school system, the full weight of the police entity of the city, the (Drug Enforcement Administration), to find out who you are, who the people after you are, and we will bring justice to the grieving parents at this school and all the schools in our community.

Police have arrested a 15-year-old boy on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with Ramos’ overdose death.

The boy, a student at an independent charter school on the same campus in Hollywood, was also charged with an overdose that landed the girl’s friend in the hospital, the LAPD chief said. , Michael Moore. A 16-year-old boy was also arrested and taken into custody on suspicion of dealing drugs for allegedly selling narcotics to a third student in Lexington Park near the high school.

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