Mom Rushed Home to Find Kids, 10 and 14, Unconscious. Months Later, She Learned They Somehow OD’d on Fentanyl (Exclusive)

• In January 2024, Kate Jones came home to find that her 14-year-old daughter, Skylar, and 10-year-old son, Gaige, were unconscious
• Autopsy and toxicology reports later revealed they both died of accidental fentanyl overdoses. An investigation is still ongoing and no one has been charged
• The kids’ mom and grandma say they don’t know how the drug got in their house but think it may have been from another student

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary on the evening of Jan. 15, 2024, according to Maryland mom Kate Jones, who was at home in the Perryville apartment she shared with her three children.

Kate and her 10-year-old son, Gaige, spent the night coloring and watching a movie while her daughters — Skylar, 14, and Allyson, 12 — were playing in their own room.

Then Kate, a truck driver who was working about 70 hours a week, went to sleep. That night Gaige got out of bed and ended up sleeping in his sisters’ room, which wasn’t unusual because Gaige and Skylar “were so close” and had been since he was born, their mom says.

The following day, Skyler and Gaige were pronounced dead — and authorities later determined the cause was an accidental fentanyl overdose, though the source of the drug remains unclear.

That makes the siblings two of the more than 80,000 people who die annually in the country of drug overdoses, most of them because of the opioid epidemic, government statistics show.

Skylar and Gaige’s mom calls it an unnerving tragedy and she and Kathy Jones, the children’s grandmother, believe the fentanyl may have been in a substance that Skylar got from another student at school.

A “baggie” was also found next to Skylar, Kathy says, although she didn’t have more information.

Authorities are continuing to investigate. No one has been accused of a crime.

Kate says she’s been having a hard time coping.

“Skylar, my oldest — that’s my best friend. The one who made me a mom,” she says. “And my son was my mama’s boy.”

On the morning of Jan. 16, 2024, Kate’s kids were off from school for a snow day, and only Allyson was awake when their mom left for work around 10 a.m.

At the time, Kate thought Skylar and Gaige were still asleep.

Kate ended up leaving work early because her truck malfunctioned amid the freezing temperatures. She had no idea anything was wrong until she got a text from Allyson that said her siblings never got out of bed and she hadn’t been able to wake them up.

“I said, ‘Are they breathing?’ ” Kate remembers asking. She wasn’t far away from the house and said she’d be right there.

“I get to the house, I run up the steps. I opened the door and I looked in, and of course I knew — a 12-year-old little girl’s not going to know, but I knew,” she says.

Immediately, Kate told Allyson to call 911 and get her grandparents, who lived at the home, too.

Kathy, the kids’ grandmother, says that her husband and Kate both administered CPR on Skylar and Gaige, who were unconscious.

When emergency responders arrived a short time later, Kathy, 53, recalls that “they kind of knew they weren’t going to be able to bring Skylar back,” but that they continued working on Gaige.

Both Skylar and Gaige were eventually pronounced dead at the scene, the Maryland State Police (MSP) said.

A search and seizure warrant was issued and authorities left with drug paraphernalia and cell phones, the MSP said. Kathy says the paraphernalia was a “baggie that was next to Skyler,” which she says was empty; the family doesn’t know how the baggie got into the home.

“When they told me what they found, I knew,” Kate says. “It was some kind of overdose.”

Still, when the autopsy report came out nearly two months later, she was shocked at the specifics.

”My son was 10 and my daughter was only 14,” she says. ”Nobody expects to hear that your babies have fentanyl in their system.”

As for where her children got the drugs, Kate says she’s mystified.

Elena Russo, an MSP spokesperson, confirmed that the investigation is ongoing.

The Maryland Department of Health said it could not immediately provide further comment for this story, including about the autopsy findings.

“She had her eyelashes, lip gloss, that whole thing,” Kate says of Skylar, adding that her daughter was at a stage in life where she had many things she wanted to pursue, like music production and interior design.

“She was so smart,” Kate says.

Meanwhile her son was an “all-American little boy” who was full of life — and loved dinosaurs.

“He was so smart. So caring and sweet,” she says. “He’d give you the shirt off his back.”

The family went on to experience another loss: James Dehaven, Gaige’s biological father, died by suicide in November 2024. Kate says James, who was also very close to Skylar, had struggled with depression after their deaths.

When James’ mom died after Gaige and Skylar, it compounded his grief.

Kate insists that although James, who did not live with them, had struggled with addiction in the years before the kids died, he had been in recovery at the time — and the children never witnessed any “active addiction” from him. Kate and James were not together at the time of his death.

Kathy and her husband are currently taking care of Kate’s daughter Allyson, now 13, who is in therapy and doing well.

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Kate is also grappling with her mental health: She says she is receiving treatment in the wake of the deaths and isn’t living with the family, though she talks to Allyson every day.

“She’s struggling,” Kathy says of Kate. “She went from a mother of three to a mother of one, and her and Skylar were very tight.” Kathy adds that Kate is working “to get herself together.”

“Being well for Ally is the most important,” Kate says, noting she expects to be living with them again soon.

To honor Skylar and Gaige, the family is doing what they can to give back to their community. In November, they brought baby blankets to a hospital for babies who shared a birthday with Gaige and Skylar and, in the future, they plan to purchase some memorial benches and create a scholarship at Perryville High School.

Kate — who says that a week before the tragedy she did have a talk with Skylar about fentanyl after her daughter had questions following health class — urges all parents to make the most of their time with their kids.

“It could be your kid any day. Your kid could be just an honor roll student in AP classes,” she says.

“Your son could be just playing on monkey bars or skating or riding his bike with his friends the day before and then … you just never know.”