Eighteen-year-old Christian Bjerk was a popular high school football
player. The middle of Keith and Debbie Bjerk's three sons, he was
looking forward to starting at North Dakota State College of Science in
the fall of 2012 and playing on the college's football team.
But on the morning of
June 11, 2012, Christian was found dead, lying face down on the sidewalk
not far from his Grand Forks, North Dakota, home.
The police officer who broke the news to Christian's father was also Christian's youth football coach.
"He teared up, and I didn't know what was going on, and he said it's Christian, he's deceased," Keith Bjerk.
Keith last saw his son
the night before as Christian was going out to buy gas. The Bjerks would
later learn that their son ran into some teens he knew and went to a
house party.
Not far from Christian's
body, the police found two disoriented teenagers. One was naked on a
bench, the other screaming at parked car. Right away, the police
suspected that drugs were involved.
According to Mike
Jennings, the detective on call that night, a search of the house where
the party was held turned up a white powder, but police couldn't
determine what it was.
Days later, another teen
was dead, and again, a mysterious white powder was involved. Officers
were racing to figure out exactly what these substances were.
Elijah Stai and his
foster brother Justin Rippentrop came to Grand Forks from Park Rapids,
Minnesota. They were celebrating Elijah's upcoming 18th birthday and
visiting his cousin.
Elijah and Justin were
hanging out with their cousin's boyfriend, Adam Budge, when according to
Justin, he offered them a special treat -- a bag of chocolate he cooked
with a white powder. Justin said that Adam told them the powder was an
extract from psychedelic mushrooms.
Elijah was nervous, Justin said, because he had never tried psychedelic mushrooms before.
Soon after they ate the bag of laced chocolate, the hallucinations began.
"The trees looked like
cauliflowers like dancing around," Justin recalled. "The sidewalks were
swooping up and down like a roller coaster, and the grass was shooting
up to the sky."
Justin said that he had tried psychedelic mushrooms once before, but he quickly realized this was something different.
Elijah started having a
violent reaction to the drug. He was convulsing uncontrollably, foaming
at the mouth and hitting his head. By the time the ambulance arrived,
Justin said he knew Elijah was gone.
Elijah was rushed to
Grand Fork's Altru Hospital, where Dr. Qasim Durrani, an ICU physician
treated him. Dr. Durrani said Elijah was suffering from multiple organ
failure and had also gone into cardiac arrest.
Elijah was brain dead. On June 15, 2012, after three days in the hospital, his family decided to disconnect his life support.
"It was an unusual overdose," said Durrani. "The dilemma was, what has he taken?"
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