SETH BARNES, 19
JOHNSON County
DIED: SEPT. 19, 2021
Mom searches for truth after son’s death in 2021.
Seth Barnes had wanted to be an architect. He loved the outdoors and hiking and camping as well as swimming. And as a boy he played about any sport he could.
“He was pretty goofy,” said his mom, Katy Meggs. “He likes to make people laugh. He was very smart about the world.”
As a teen, he sometimes struggled to find his footing and eventually dropped out of high school. And when Meggs and her daughters went to a domestic violence shelter so the family could escape abuse, his mom said he went to live with his uncle.
Then, a couple of years later, when Meggs and her youngest daughter left for Arizona, he stayed in Shawnee with his older sister, who he was close with. She became his guardian.
But Meggs and her only son still talked all the time. He told her what was going on, regardless of how personal and painful it could be, she said. She knew about his addiction to opioids, which started in early high school, and he told her when he began doing fentanyl.
And once he stopped doing that synthetic opioid, because of how dangerous it could be, he let her know that, too.
“He hadn’t taken fentanyl in a long time,” Meggs said.
Until the day he died.
In mid-September two years ago, while she was watching a Chiefs game at her Arizona home, she got a message through Facebook from a lifelong friend whose son was friends with her son.
“When’s the last time you’ve spoken to Seth?” the friend asked her. “… You need to call him.”
But by that time, he was already gone. Meggs would later find out that her son’s girlfriend found him unresponsive in her living room. First responders worked 45 minutes to revive him, Meggs was told, including using CPR and Narcan.
Since that day, Meggs’ mind has been flooded with questions. Did someone give Seth fentanyl without him knowing? Who gave him the pill? Why wasn’t more done to find out who did?
“But I honestly feel like he did not know” he was taking fentanyl, she said. “He hadn’t (used it) for a long time, he was doing really great. And that’s what really bothers me.”
Meggs returned to the Kansas City area the first weekend of September with the main intention of understanding more about her son’s death. To talk to detectives and understand why more wasn’t done in the investigation.
Her last text from the detective was Oct. 25, 2021.
“I want to get to the bottom of where it (the fentanyl) came from,” Meggs said. “Not to see someone go to jail. Just for the fact to let them know that I know. To get justice for him.”
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