Ex-swimming champion Jamie Cail who died in February this year has been found to have overdosed on fentanyl.
The 42 year old died of “fentanyl intoxication with aspiration of gastric content”. Cail who was found dead by her boyfriend on the floor of her home in Virgin Islands had returned from a bar just after midnight at the time.
She was rushed to to the Myrah Keating-Smith Clinic where doctors tried to perform CPR on her before she was declared dead.
Cail won the gold medal in the 800 free relay as a member of the US swim team at the 1997 Pan Pacific Championships. She won the California high school championship in the 200-meter individual medley and the 500 free, and she swam at the University of Southern California.
She also swam with the University of Maine from 2000 to 2001. Fentanyl is an opioid used as a painkiller and deaths from fentanyl have been on the rise in recent years.
According to statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been more than 100,000 deaths from drug overdoses in 2021.
The fentanyl tragedy
The White House is also working on expanding funding to fight fentanyl overdoses by expanding access to addiction care and assisting the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.
The police say that they have not ascertained where she obtained the fentanyl from. Her family said that her death was a shock to them and they were “devastated” and shaken to the core.
Friends posted on her passing saying that she had been “trying to escape” and that she “deserves justice”.
Another post said that, “she tried to escape to start healing. Unfortunately she didn’t make it in time. You were so close honey.”
The swimmer worked at a coffee shop and bookstore in St John. Residents in the area paid tribute to her outside the store with cards and flowers.
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The photo above is from a YouTube screen grab