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A friend's overdose death turns high school students to activists

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A friend's overdose death turns high school students to activists

Niko Peterson and Zoe Ramsey worked to change local school policy and Colorado law after losing a friend to an opioid overdose.

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In early May, just a few weeks before graduation, Zoe Ramsey and Niko Peterson were sitting in an unlit, empty classroom at Animas High School in Durango, Colo., sorting through photos on a laptop.

The two high school seniors were wrapping up work on a two-page yearbook spread of words and images to honor their friend Gavinn McKinney.

In one photo, Peterson sits, wearing a knit cap and a goofy expression on his face. Another boy, with a tousled puff of dark hair, looking more sober and serious, stands behind with his chin on Peterson’s head.

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This is Gavinn McKinney, who died two years ago during their sophomore year, just nine days before his 16th birthday.

“It represents our friendship pretty well, I think,” said Peterson. “I would have never imagined that this would be an in memoriam type of picture, but it’s a pretty good one.”

Youth susceptible to fake pills

On the evening of Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, McKinney and a friend took pills they believed to be the narcotic Percocet. But the pills were counterfeit and laced with fentanyl. Paramedics saved the other boy’s life with Narcan, a nasal spray that can quickly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. McKinney died before anyone could reach him.

“He was just like a wise soul,” Ramsey said. “I feel like he just knew something that none of us knew. And I’m never going to know what that is.”

Historically, drug overdose deaths among teenagers have been extremely rare. Even today, teen overdose deaths account for a small fraction of the total number of overdose fatalities nationwide. But in the past five years, the number of teen overdose fatalities rose sharply and suddenly, driven by a surge in the availability of counterfeit pills.

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“I think people don’t realize just how complex and terrifying the illicit drug supply is becoming in the age of synthetics,” said Joseph Friedman, who studies addiction and illicit drugs at UCLA. “There’s this huge array of novel substances that are being synthesized, mixed in with fentanyl, in many cases sold as these preformulated counterfeit pills.”

While teens are unlikely to experiment with powder substances, they are more comfortable trying what they think are prescription drugs, and the swift rise in counterfeit pills has produced deadly results. Friedman co-authored a January 2024 study in the New England Journal of Medicine linking the rise in teen overdose deaths with the widespread availability of counterfeit pills, especially in the American West.

“We know that many teens (who) are fatally overdosing do not have an addiction, or a problem with drugs,” Friedman said. “In many cases, it’s just teenagers that are just experimenting with counterfeit pills. They may have only experimented a handful of times when a tragedy happens.”

This was precisely what happened to Gavinn McKinney in December 2021, according to his peers — he was experimenting with pills he believed to be safe. McKinney’s death was a sudden blow of shock and despair for the students and staff at Animas High School.

“We ended up just pulling the 10th graders together that morning,” said humanities teacher Lori Fisher, recalling the first morning at school following McKinney’s death. “We had grief counselors on hand, and then we had these three rooms of kids just crying and remembering and dealing with their grief.”

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Among those closest to McKinney, Zoe Ramsey and Niko Peterson turned overwhelming grief into a resolve to take action.

“They were adamant from the very beginning that they wanted his death to mean something,” said Fisher. “It took them a while to figure out exactly what that looked like and what that meant for them. When they came upon this idea of harm reduction, Zoe was like, ‘This is it. This is what we need to be doing. This is where we need to be going.’”

Gavinn McKinney and Zoey Ramsey became close friends in their 10th grade year at Animas High School

Gavinn McKinney and Zoey Ramsey became close friends in their 10th grade year at Animas High School

Zoe Ramsey/courtesy Zoe Ramsey


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Zoe Ramsey/courtesy Zoe Ramsey

Fighting for the right to carry Narcan in school

Harm reduction is an approach to addiction treatment that prioritizes compassion and safety over shame and punitive action. Rather than insist on sobriety and abstinence, harm reduction attempts to minimize the harmful consequences associated with drug use. It’s better to provide tools that help a drug user live, rather than have the person die of an overdose.

As Ramsey and Peterson read up on harm reduction, they learned about fentanyl test strips, which allow a drug user to detect lethal opioids. They also discovered Narcan, with its active ingredient naloxone, which can reverse a fentanyl overdose.

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“I had no idea what naloxone was. I had no idea what a fentanyl test strip was. I didn’t even know how little fentanyl it could take to kill somebody until after Gavinn’s death,” said Ramsey. “Then I realized, after the fact, that this could have been prevented, and nobody was teaching us about what could have been done instead…That’s when Niko (and I decided), ‘If the teachers, parents, and administrators aren’t telling us about this, then we need to tell our peers, and we need to do what we can to protect them.’”

Many schools stock Narcan for teachers and staff to use. But when it comes to students, there’s a legal gray area, and school administrators worry about liability. So when Ramsey, Peterson and other teens in Durango asked for permission to carry Narcan on campus, they ran into drug policies prohibiting the possession of any medication.

Undeterred, the teens lobbied Durango’s school board for permission to carry and administer Narcan on school grounds. They carried picket signs outside monthly school board meetings and spoke during public comment periods of those meetings.

Following that successful campaign, the teens worked with a Colorado state representative on a bill to give that same right to students across the state.

By February, Niko Peterson and other teens were testifying at a legislative hearing in the state capital. During that testimony, skeptical legislators challenged the idea that students were emotionally prepared to act as first responders in school.

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“My son in high school is 14,” said state Rep. Anthony Hartsook. “I don’t know that he can evaluate whether somebody is having an allergic reaction, a medical reaction, a drug reaction.”

It was a moment when the teens wondered whether the bill would pass.

“I was worried we wouldn’t be able to convince them,” Ramsey recalled. “I spent more time on this than my college applications, and I just wanted all my hard work to pay off.”

The hard work did pay off near the end of April, when Colorado’s lieutenant governor signed the bill into law.

“Seeing it actually pass, and seeing people agree with it, was like a deep breath, a breath of fresh air,” said Ramsey.

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After changing local school policy, and helping rewrite state law, it was time to graduate from high school.

But in the final days before graduation, as Ramsey and Peterson wrapped up senior projects and planned a class camping trip, each milestone was another reminder of their friend’s absence.

“We’re grieving still,” said Peterson. “I’ve been struggling with trying to still find the happiness in things … even though he’s not doing them with me.”

“I just finished a 32-page thesis on what the most effective harm-reduction educational strategies are,” said Ramsey. “I wonder what Gavinn would have written about? Would it have been quantum computing? We have no idea. We have no idea.”

On May 24, Animas High School left an empty seat at its graduation ceremony to remember Gavinn McKinney.

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“He’s not going to be able to walk with us,” said Ramsey, her voice breaking. “But he would have graduated with us. Yeah. He would have graduated with us.”

Adam Burke and Clark Adomaitis have been covering Narcan in Durango schools since January 2023. You can find their stories here.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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