JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Misty Carmichael remembers how her son Kevin Jackson was a gentle, sweet baby, who laughed and smiled a lot.
“He was in the Air Force,” Carmichael explains. “He helped strangers. He would do chores for the neighbors, and I’d say, ‘How much you got paid?’... ‘oh mama.’”
The reminiscing is bittersweet for Carmichael, who tries to stay optimistic, even seeing her share of tragedy.
“I feel guilt; I miss him tremendously. I lost a part of me, my motivation,” she says.
Carmichael’s memories and Jackson’s smile on display in photos throughout her house are what she has as the constant memory of the son she loved, the son she lost in May 2022.
Kevin Jackson is one of the 472 people in Duval County alone lost in overdose deaths that year, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
Carmichael said that after losing his daughter, Jackson slipped into recreational drugs, and bought cocaine the night he died, not knowing it was laced with fentanyl.
In recent years, police and prosecutors have been fighting back against overdose deaths, going after the dealers who sold the deadly dose. To get an inside look, the News4JAX I-TEAM embedded with JSO’s Overdose Squad, made up of detectives from both homicide and narcotics, and responded to some of the calls with them.
“At one point in time, these cases were not being investigated. With that, we didn’t necessarily have the crisis that we have now,” said JSO Sergeant Kenny Lentz.
In 2018, Florida lawmakers expanded the definition of homicide to include selling drugs proven to cause someone’s death.
“We recognize we’re not going to arrest our way out of this problem, but we’re not going to ignore it. So our investigators have grown significantly. This is a new style of police work,” Lentz explained.
Lentz and his team took the I-TEAM along on some of their investigations: a man dead at a Southside hotel, a man injecting a fatal dose in a restroom of a fast-food restaurant in the St. Johns Town Center area, and a woman found dead in her Westside trailer.
“She was just laying here right inside the couch, there was a kit underneath her,” Lentz said about the Westside investigation.
The woman’s boyfriend, who was there with her at the time, has a warrant and is detained for questioning, as detectives try to find out who sold her the fatal fentanyl. A trip back to narcotics leads to hours of interviewing.
“I didn’t do it!” the boyfriend told detectives, as Lentz asked how many times he had been with her to buy drugs. But detectives said that with an uncooperative witness, they’d have to rely on forensics and phone records to find the dealers.
The process can take weeks, months, and even years for police to get enough evidence for charges.
This past May, officers arrested Robert Graham on a slew of charges including manslaughter, linking him to an accidental overdose death. Police found three handguns, a shotgun, a rifle, meth, cocaine, and fentanyl during his arrest. Graham is now serving a 15-year prison sentence.
In March, JSO carried out one of its biggest overdose busts ever, as dozens of officers, led by the SWAT team, took down more than 30 people at the Jax Inn Motel, a place where investigators say seven people died of overdoses last year alone.
In all, more than 70 people were arrested, as a result of the investigation. The ongoing operation to take down drug rings continues, with warrants out for dozens more.
JSO works closely with the State Attorney’s Office, which can seek up to life in prison for a drug overdose death.
“My message to the dealers would be, we’re coming after you, we’ll find you, and we will stop this activity,” Assistant State Attorney Joe Licandro said.
We asked the prosecutor if he believed the dealers knew they were potentially killing people.
“Without a doubt, I’ve seen that. I’ve had a couple cases where they’ve killed someone, and then they’ve gone out and dealt again,” Licandro explained.
All this comes with harsh sentences like the 30-year sentence dealer Derrick Smith received for manslaughter after selling a woman a deadly dose.
The list of offenders turned inmates keeps growing.
“You will have those cases where you have a good timeline, you have a good toxicology. Sometimes you also have that undercover follow-up investigation that helps prove that this individual was the one who provided their narcotics,” Assistant State Attorney Lauren Randall said.
JSO continues to send more cases to the state attorney:
- In 2022, 472 overdose investigations led to 63 arrests and 19 homicide charges
- In 2023, 433 overdose investigations led to 113 arrests and 21 homicide charges
In 2024, there is currently a downward trend in local overdose-related deaths:
- As of July 19, 2024, there have been 185 investigative responses to suspected overdose-related deaths
- In 2023, there were 244 investigative responses through July 19th
- In 2022, there were 251 investigative responses through July 19th
“These men and women are going out and they’re putting the time and effort into these investigations,” said JSO Chief Edwin Cayenne. “That did not happen years ago.”
“I think the drug dealers are now aware that we are out here and we will target you if you are putting this poison into the citizens of Jacksonville.”
As for Carmichael, she continues to hold on to her memories of him as she still waits for justice for her son Kevin Jackson.
“We had such conversations that...you would have liked him. He would have made you smile. He would have made you laugh,” she said.
The sheriff’s office continues to look at evidence in that case, hoping to someday bring this grieving mother answers.
If you have any information about drug dealers or someone who has caused a deadly overdose, call the sheriff’s office at 904-630-0500. You can also send an anonymous tip to First Coast Crime Stoppers by calling 866-845-TIPS, and you could be eligible for a cash reward.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, you can call the Crisis Support Line at 988.