Oakland County mother raises awareness with billboards after losing son to fentanyl poisoning
Mother uses son's fentanyl death to raise awareness
After losing her son Brandon to fentanyl poisoning, Rebecca Elmaksoud started putting billboards up to raise awareness. There are more than 90 billboards up around the United States that show people killed by the powerful opioid.
CLARKSTON, Mich. (FOX 2) - A month after losing her 28-year-old daughter to stomach cancer, Rebecca Elmaksoud lost her 29-year-old son to fentanyl poisoning.
"It was a senseless death, a senseless death that could've been prevented," she said.
Elmaksoud calls her son Brandon's death a murder. She said she doesn't know who gave him the fentanyl, and she doesn't want to know.
"I don't because the person that sold him may not have known, maybe they had known," she said.
She said Bradon couldn't have known he was taking the deadly opioid.
"Absolutely not, 100%. He would've never taken fentanyl," she said.
Brandon was married with two children and living in California. After his sister was given just six months to live, he started abusing alcohol.
"Brandon checked himself into rehab, and he was clean for almost five months. He came back for my daughter's funeral, then he went back to rehab and stayed clean for another 38 days. But unfortunately the night he went out he was given 100% fentanyl and was poisoned and killed," Elmaksoud said.
She now copes with the loss by spreading awareness. She is using a billboard project to do so. She currently has more than 90 billboards around the country showing pictures of people "murdered by fentanyl."
"This is not a red and blue issue this is a red, white, and blue issue," Elmaksoud said. "I have no regrets. None. It was just a senseless murder. That's it."
Seeing the photos of her son on the billboard upsets her, knowing what caused his death.
"A lot of anger that I have to be out here doing this when I should be enjoying the rest of my life with my children," she said.