Opioid Crisis Fridays: True Stories from Missouri – Ashton Harmon-Manser, 22

Died: September 7, 2020

Jackson County

‘Never any kind of investigation’

Soon after he overdosed on his mother’s couch in Platte City in late 2019, Ashton Harmon-Manser went to live at the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center in Kansas City.

“He got baptized while he was there; he was doing great,” said his mother, Sara Manser. He was released in May 2020 and moved into a halfway house.

Just after midnight that Sept. 7, Ashton took a photo with his dog, Coco Puff, outside the house and posted it on Snapchat. Hours later, he was found dead in a locked bathroom. The cause: acute fentanyl intoxication.

“He had oxy (oxycodone) in his system and marijuana, and the oxy was laced with fentanyl,” Manser said. “And what killed him was the fentanyl.”

Manser said Ashton started using drugs his freshman and sophomore years in high school.

“He had really bad anxiety and depression,” she said. “He began dabbling with marijuana, and from there, Xanax and things like that. Then when he moved in with me in Platte City, he got connected with a couple of girls that had given him an oxy for the first time. And it took off from there.”

She said she tried the tough love approach — “you know, scare him straight.” She even called police on him, which resulted in a record for possession.

Manser said she kicked Ashton out during his senior year. He went to live at a friend’s house down the street and ended up “barely graduating” in 2017, she said.

It was October 2019, she said, when Ashton overdosed on her couch. After that, he briefly went to jail for violating his probation. At the end of the year, she said, he went to the Salvation Army rehab center, and from there, he ended up at the halfway house the following May.

The night Ashton died, Manser said, he went into the bathroom and locked the door. After there was no response to people knocking on the door over several hours, she said, it was forced open.

“They presumed he had passed away at least four or five hours before they found him.”

From Ashton’s Snapchat account, Manser said, she pieced together the chain of events that night. The messages indicated that he’d bought some pills outside the house.

“I could follow on his Snapchat every single thing that he had done and every conversation that he had, and pictures,” she said. “I mean, it literally shows where, hours before on that same day, he went right outside the halfway house and bought something from somebody.”

She said she transferred the Snapchat data onto a file and gave it to a Kansas City police detective.

“It was the complete dump of all conversations, all pictures, everything that was within his Snapchat,” she said. “And what was crazy is even after Ashton had passed away, there were people that were messaging his phone, asking if he wanted to buy this — trying to sell drugs.

“And they still wouldn’t do anything. There was never any kind of investigation. They say that there’s not enough evidence. They can’t open up the case just because of something that was written on social media. The family members are the ones doing the investigations, not the police.”

Ashton was an outgoing, fun-loving kid who liked to make people laugh, Manser said. He was respectful and loved hanging out with his friends. He also loved football and baseball, she said, and was active in Boy Scouts, coming “very close” to becoming an Eagle Scout.

Ashton liked to sing, Manser said, and had “a deep, deep voice.”

“People were drawn to his voice just because it was so deep,” she said. “And while he was at the Salvation Army, he had a solo that he sang for the choir, which was just phenomenal.”

On Sept. 1, she and Tracy Morrissey, whose son, Collin Hanshel, died from fentanyl in April 2020, went to a concert in Las Vegas featuring Jelly Roll, a Southern rapper turned award-winning country singer/songwriter and also a former addict and drug dealer.

They’d made signs with pictures of their sons, and the audience passed them forward to Jelly Roll, who held them up on the stage and recognized the moms and their boys. Afterward, they got to meet Jelly Roll.

“The most amazing thing is that out of that concert, we’ve had several people, families and people in recovery, reaching out to us to support and wanting support,” Manser said.

They’re also raising awareness through billboards across the country. When Manser put one of Ashton up in Kansas City last year, a woman contacted her, she said.

“She drove by that board a couple of times,” Manser said. “And then she said the last time she drove by it, she had her kids in the car. And she said that she educated her kids about fentanyl and the dangers. And that’s what we’re trying to do when we put this information out, is that someone sees it, and there’s a difference that’s made.”

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