Mother Clings to Dying Daughter After Overdose

'She was my only daughter, my best friend'
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 16, 2017 9:45 AM CDT
Updated Aug 20, 2017 5:48 PM CDT
Mother Clings to Dying Daughter After Overdose
Cheryl Towery and her daughter Elaina.   (Cheryl Towery)

Seven years of addiction, five overdoses, several detoxes, and giving up her son to adoptive parents didn't prove to be enough to help 22-year-old Elaina Towery kick her heroin habit, reports the New York Daily News. Towery, of Howell, Mich., was found slumped over in a Burger King bathroom last week, thought to have used heroin laced with the far more potent fentanyl, reports the Independent. Four days later, with no brain activity and her mother clinging to her body, Towery was taken off life support on Monday. "She was my only daughter, my best friend," her mother tells Fox 2 Detroit in a bid to spread awareness to those battling addiction. "I'm going to fight for the rest of my life to make sure the people down here on the street selling this to people need to be locked up."

Towery's mother, Cheryl Towery, says her daughter grew up in a loving home, but that she began to take prescription drugs in 2010 to help cope with an abusive boyfriend who has since been convicted of domestic violence. They had a son, now 5, together, whom she "gave up due to her addiction because she wanted him to be in a better place." Towery says her daughter's addiction only worsened from there, and that she found her "beat up, being pimped out, being kept in a hotel room on heroin." Towery's shared photo isn't as uncommon as one might hope: A Canadian mother shared a photo of her 22-year-old son dying of a similar overdose in April. (One girl overdosed earlier this year in Pennsylvania at the age of 11.)

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