“Ezekiel was a very quiet child, an athlete with a bit of an artistic streak. He was very cosmopolitan, a bit anti-globalization, a very left-wing social democrat with great values that I liked. He is a little boy who has always made me proud his entire life. He earned his degree in childhood education techniques. He had just received a college acceptance letter. He wanted to be a teacher,” says his father Sébastien Aubé with a proud heart.
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Ezekiel had been accepted into the college as a teacher. “He had a gift for working with children. That’s why he was in childhood education [au cégep] », emphasizes his father.
Photo: Family Social Media
However, Ezekiel Aubé-Gauthier was never supposed to set foot at the university. A few days after Christmas he was found dead, just a few steps from his bed. It was his father who made the terrible discovery that no parent wants to experience. I opened the door and saw my son lying on the floor. For a moment you think he’s sleeping, but he was dead. My first instinct is not to believe it. You wish time would stand still. But at the same time I know it’s too late. I automatically called 911.
The first responders who arrived quickly confirmed the worst: it was too late. Ezekiel is no more.
Although almost twenty calendar pages have been torn out since that terrible day, the Aubés’ pain is still just as great. Tears often flow when Sébastien tells not only what happened in his house, but above all what broke his heart forever on December 29, 2021.
You are frozen by the incomprehension and the pain that has no name. I have never experienced such pain in my entire life. Never. Never.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Ezekiel’s sister Emery Jane is having dinner with her mother-in-law Cleophe. I felt like it wasn’t working, that it wasn’t normal. When my father opened the door, all I heard was silence. Then he started screaming. I ran upstairs. When I arrived I saw my father, then my brother. I really thought they were fooling me. It was her way of making jokes to me in the same way.
Although deep down she hoped that Sebastian and Ezekiel had played the worst joke, Emery Jane knew that wasn’t the case. I touched it, then it was cold. It’s an image I’ll never forget.
As she remembers these painful images, the teenager looks to the sky as if she would find the strength there to continue her story. A necessary story that needs to be told, she believes.
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At the top of those stairs, Emery Jane saw her big brother alive for the last time.
Photo: Radio-Canada / André Vuillemin
In fact, Emery Jane has asked herself a thousand questions since then. Above all, she asks herself whether she could have changed anything about this tragic fate. The night before, the sister and brother’s paths had crossed in the hallway leading to the bathroom. According to the coroner’s office, Ezekiel’s death occurred around 2 a.m., shortly after that last encounter. “I’ll always blame myself because…” she said, unable to finish her sentence, her eyes staring into the water.
Total surprise
Shortly after the call for help, this East Sherbrooke household was raided by police and investigators. Photos are taken on every corner. The interrogations are carried out separately. The location is searched from top to bottom. They all have a common goal: to understand what might have killed Ezekiel, a young man in the prime of his life.
The answer won’t be long in coming. A policewoman comes into the kitchen with a box full of things that neither Sébastien nor Emery Jane have seen. She thought my son was selling drugs.
This was not the case. Ezekiel had instead founded a personal pharmacy to alleviate his suffering. At least this is the conclusion reached by the coroner Gilles Sainton, who is responsible for clarifying the causes and circumstances of this death.
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“I had so many good times with him and I’m so sad I won’t have more! He was truly a confidant. He knew everything about my life before anyone else. It’s special to have had that because there were still seven years between us. I was very lucky to be close to my brother,” emphasizes Emery Jane.
Photo: Radio-Canada / André Vuillemin
According to him, the young man was struggling with a certain amount of grief and anxiety, but there was no evidence that he was intoxicated with suicidal intent. It was a fatal but accidental poisoning, he wrote in his report.
A surprising discovery in Ezekiel’s computer then sheds new light on the last months of his life. There, police investigators found an electronic spreadsheet, a type of Excel file, in which he systematically recorded all the drugs he had taken.
He wrote down what he consumed from July until his death. We see what he took, the amount, the time and the impact it had on him. It’s as if we could keep a daily diary of our consumption. For example, we assume that he took meth and flualprazolam on December 1st, explains Mr. Aubé.
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Ezekiel recorded all his consumption in detail on an electronic spreadsheet.
Photo: Radio-Canada
From this, forensic pathologist Sainton was able to conclude: There was no indication that he had consumed fentanyl [dans son document d’ordinateur] […]This suggests that Mr. Aubé-Gauthier did not know that he would use fentanyl.
Apparently, Ezekiel was unknowingly drugged with this powerful opioid.
No matter how careful he thought he was being, he still died. Who does that? [consigner sa consommation]? The police had never seen this before. “In retrospect, we realized that my son had a kind of self-medication system, as if he was taking certain doses of Speed and certain doses of Xanax every day to manage his anxiety, his sleep and his concentration,” summarizes Sébastien Aubé. still surprised.
In addition to documenting his consumption, Ezekiel recorded several pieces of information about his health. He made his sleep charts and kept statistics. He wrote: “I managed to sleep so many hours every day.” I see this today and see a young person who was afraid but also suffered from insomnia, like probably many, many people, and who thought he did the right thing by dealing with it this way, analyzes his father.
The coroner told me that this type of consumption was recreational. In his opinion, it wasn’t good for your health, but it wasn’t enough to kill anyone. It was really the presence of fentanyl that killed him.
The father also had access to the purchase history recorded on Ezekiel’s cell phone. We saw what he ordered and it’s ridiculous how cheap it is. It’s like peanuts. That equates to $1.50 per pill. It seems the stronger it is, the cheaper it is, he complains.
Ezekiel spent his final months of life amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Between distance learning, restrictions and isolation, the young man’s everyday life proved difficult to bear. We had access to his entire life, documented on Facebook, with notes, his cell phone. He didn’t take it before the pandemic. He is one of the young people who has not been helped by isolation. He was looking for answers or comfort [dans les médicaments] and ironically with CERB money [Prestation canadienne d’urgence]makes Mr. Aubé sad.
His family claims Ezekiel tried to see a doctor in the weeks before his death. It was really difficult to get appointments and then be seen by a doctor. “He wanted, but he got nothing,” complains Emery Jane.
As a parent, you feel stupid for not knowing, for not seeing it, for not doing it… It’s not fair for this to happen to a 21 year old with the future ahead of him had. As a parent, I hate myself. It’s like a feeling of immense failure.
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For Sébastien Aubé there is a before and an after from December 29, 2021. “Something is broken inside me. Normally I don’t care at all. I don’t know how to explain it, but since that day something broke inside me. »
Photo: Radio-Canada / André Vuillemin
Numerous drug seizures
Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine. A single dose of 2 mg can be fatal. According to Health Canada, this drug has caused the deaths of 30,000 Canadians since 2016, accounting for 75% of all overdoses in the country. In Sherbrooke, there are four deaths related to an overdose of this opioid in coroner’s reports released since January 1, 2022. The picture may be less bleak in this regard than elsewhere in the country, but according to the Sherbrooke Police Service (SPS), seizures of illegal drugs are common.
We are talking about many tablets, derivatives and tablets from the opiate family: hydromorphone, oxycodone, hydromorph contin, all these types of tablets that are prescribed to people for health problems and that are stolen or taken off the market legally and resold illegally on the street market. There are also many benzodiazepines, Ativan, Valium, Xanax, explains Sébastien Ouimet, head of the operational and administrative support department at the SPS.
If users of these street drugs believe they are getting the right medication, nothing is less safe, he warns. There are secret laboratories that produce pills that give the impression that they come from a legitimate laboratory, a pharmaceutical company. We cannot know with certainty what we consume. The risks can, with a tablet, [aller] until death. It’s really dangerous.
To avoid tragedies like Ezekiel’s, the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS, in collaboration with the organizations IRIS Estrie and Élixir, purchased a new drug analysis device called a spectrometer. This tool allows consumers to determine the exact composition of the substances in their possession. There is currently no known date of commissioning of the device. The project is progressing well, but some aspects are still open [juridiques] must be finalized so that the device can be used in the Elixir premises, the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS announced by email.
Ezekiel’s father is categorical: he is convinced that his son would have been a user of this type of machine. After seeing how he behaved and documenting what he consumed, I am 100% confident that he would have tested what he was taking. Secure.
And maybe… abandon the father and his daughter.
This type of purchase, which may be frowned upon by some people, can save lives. There may also be an opportunity to intervene with these people.
Instagram to raise awareness
Since that fatal day her big brother was stolen, Emery Jane has made it a point to speak openly about the devastating effects a single dose of fentanyl can wreak. Openly, without shame. Through her Instagram account, she also wants to make people realize that these tragedies can happen in any family, even the most perfect one.
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It was a holiday with the Aubé family when the reaper came by. The youngest, Iñigo Antonin, celebrated his second birthday that day. “It was ironic to see the police arriving everywhere with party balloons, as if it were a joy,” recalls Sébastien Aubé. (archive photo)
Photo: Family Social Media
Above all, she wants to make as many people as possible aware of naloxone, a drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose.
It is something that everyone should have at home because you never know what can happen. “It can happen at a party, in your own house, in the neighbor’s house, you never know,” she emphasizes. It can save someone’s life while they wait for paramedics and first responders.
Although this drug is available at pharmacies for free and without a prescription, the teenager wants naloxone to be distributed in schools so that as many people as possible have it on hand. If.
“What needs to change is that people need to be worried so that they know that it can happen to them even if they have perfect families,” repeats Sébastien Aubé.
Ezekiel looks like the little boy next door and then the little boy on the other side. If it happened in my family, it could happen in yours too.
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“I don’t know them, the other parents, but I don’t want this to happen to them. “If we can save at least one person…” emphasizes Sébastien Aubé. (archive photo)
Photo: Family Social Media