Jackson County
Died: Feb. 12, 2022
‘If not your child, it’s going to be someone you know’
Matthew Smith started down the path to addiction in high school.
At 17, while high on meth, he and two others broke into some cars.
“And Matt got sentenced to eight years,” said his mother, Lori Smith. “They first gave him probation, but due to his meth addiction, he couldn’t test clean.”
He was 25 when he finally got out of prison.
“He went in addicted to meth,” Smith said. “He came out an IV heroin user.”
Matt struggled at first, but then went through treatment and got clean, she said. He got married and had a daughter. He secured a good job as a millwright, traveled out of the country for work and was promoted multiple times. But he’d developed back problems over the years, she said, and then his marriage started falling apart.
“He got a prescription for Vicodin, and it just accelerated pretty quickly,” Smith said. “He did try to get clean a few times. It just broke my heart that he wanted to. He just wasn’t able to.”
She said the two had talked a couple of years ago about the dangers of fentanyl after a cousin’s friend overdosed, and Matt insisted that the OxyContin pills he was buying were pharmaceuticals. They came from someone he knew, he told her, and it was that person’s prescription pills that he was buying.
He was afraid to seek treatment for his addiction because of the stigma, Smith said.
“He was a superintendent for a union company — a well-paying job,” she said. “He was highly thought of. He was scared to death he was gonna lose this job. I said, ‘Matt. They’re not gonna do that.’ But that fear overrides, and the drug tells you ‘No, you don’t need to (seek treatment).’”
On Feb. 12, 2022, Matt had planned to watch his 8-year-old daughter and his ex-wife’s other daughter for the day. When they arrived at his house in Independence, they found him unconscious in the garage. That’s where he would sit in the mornings and have coffee and a cigarette, Smith said, because he didn’t smoke in the house.
“By the time I got there, I watched them roll him out to the ambulance,” she said. “And I knew in my heart of hearts that he was gone.”
Later, on a table in his house, Smith found half of what resembled an M30 oxycodone pill. She’s angry that more than a year and a half after her son’s death, no one has been charged.
“The police went through the phone, and then as next of kin they gave me the phone back,” she said. “I went in and within 10 to 15 minutes, I found cash transactions with Cash App with an individual that I kept telling them sold him the pills. But the attitude of the detective was that my son got what he deserved, that he knew what he was doing.
“I loved my son. He was an addict, but just because he was an addict doesn’t mean he deserved to die.”
Matt had “a very strong personality,” she said, and was funny and “super smart.”
“Anything that he applied himself to, he was good at,” she said. “Everybody that I know who knew him loved him. He was just a good guy who had a big heart.”
Smith organized an Aug. 31 rally in an Independence park to help raise awareness about the fentanyl crisis. After Matt died at 37, she said, “I just kind of lost my voice for a while. I just wasn’t able to speak — not coherently, anyway. This is how I can get it back.
“I will not stop until I see justice, not only for my son but for anybody who dies of this,” she said. “This is affecting every person in America. If not your child, it’s going to be someone you know.”
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