Author: Gary Nager

Although we never met until about a month ago, Laura Sun Engelberger and I have a lot in common. We’ve both raised our families here in New Tampa, we’re both divorced and we both were blessed with two amazing sons.

But, the reason Laura and I met at her home in West Meadows a few weeks ago isn’t a happy one. Laura’s older son, Brandon Sun, tragically passed away a few months ago, five months before his 17th birthday. Laura still doesn’t know exactly what transpired the day he died, but she waited to talk about what happened until after she got back the autopsy and toxicology report ten weeks after he passed (on June 22), which said her son died from an “accidental drowning,” even though she already knew he also took two “tabs” of LSD that night.

“And, unfortunately, I have since learned that this wasn’t the first time Brandon took LSD,” she said. “It’s a nightmare that I never thought I would go through with either of my kids, but certainly not this sweet, wonderful honor student with everything to live for.”

Laura says she knows teenagers can be sullen and moody, especially when the family is going through a divorce, and she admits that Brandon’s personality had started to change when she and her now-ex-husband first separated two years ago. “Brandon definitely seemed angry,” she says, but she added that during the weeks before he passed away, Brandon had seemed more like his old self, “and his grades (he was at Freedom High in Tampa Palms) never suffered.”

Laura admits that, especially when she was raising Brandon and his brother Austin herself during the separation period, “I was and I guess I still am that over-protective mom. I wouldn’t let Brandon have a car unless he had a job, I made him sign a contract to have a cell phone in eighth grade and I thought I always made sure I knew where he was and who he was with.”

She also admits that she had concerns about some of Brandon’s friends, but is quick to say she doesn’t blame the four boys who were with him the night he passed away.

“I’ve told the other boys I forgive them,” Laura says. “Now, I’m just hoping that by telling our story, maybe another family might not have to go through what we have.”

So, What Actually Happened?

Laura told me that Brandon and four of his friends had driven to the rest area located near the north end (in St. Petersburg) of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge that night to drop acid together.

“Five boys left together, supposedly to go to one of the other boys’ houses, on a Monday night, but only four came home,” she told me through tears. “They left the campground without him around 10:30 the next morning and didn’t tell anyone what happened until I started calling and texting his friends looking for him at 3:45.”

The problem, she said, was that the boys all said the same thing — while being interviewed by the police later on Tuesday — that they all took the LSD together that night, but they honestly didn’t know and couldn’t remember if Brandon went walking off by himself or what happened to him at all.

“But, they were so afraid of getting in trouble themselves that they decided to leave and not say anything,” she recalls. “If they would’ve called 9-1-1 as soon as they realized they couldn’t find him, maybe my son would still be alive today. I don’t know. All I know is that his body was literally “caught” by a high school kid near the (North Skyway Fishing) Pier while he was fishing two days later.”

That’s the lesson Laura hopes other parents  will tell their teenagers after reading this story.

“There is a ‘Good Samaritan 911’ law here in Florida (see page 39) that would have protected those children from any possible prosecution if they would have called the police,” she said. “But, young people are so afraid of ‘getting in trouble’ that they will do everything they can to avoid talking to the police or even their parents, especially when they’ve been taking drugs.”

As Laura spoke, the case reminded me all too much of a similar one about a decade ago, when former Wharton High student Sara Rinaldi, whose mother used to work for me, died several hours after her eyes rolled back in her head following a night of partying due to an apparently lethal mix of drugs because her friends were too afraid to call an ambulance.

Laura says that her son did not jump off the Skyway Bridge, as his body showed no signs of that kind of trauma. I also was surprised to learn that neither she nor her ex-husband had to identify their son’s body in person.

“Brandon’s body was identified from a photograph, not in person,” she says. “There was an official autopsy and toxicology report that we didn’t get until ten weeks later.”

She adds, “Some people have asked me how I could not have identified him, didn’t I need that closure? The closure is that my son is gone. Knowing exactly how he died isn’t going to change that.”

She cautioned, however, that if you’re the parent of a teenager, don’t just assume you know if your child is doing drugs or not.

“Every high school in this area has kids who are doing drugs and they usually get them from other kids at school,” she says. “Don’t think you’re not going to be touched by this just because you come from a ‘good family.’ We were that good family, but it still happened to us. Of course, everyone has been through some sort of tragedy. Mine is no better or worse than anyone else’s. Grief is all the same.”

So, then why is Laura sharing her story now? “I guess I’m hoping that other parents will tell their kids that when faced with a choice that can change someone’s life, they should do the right thing and not be more afraid of getting in trouble,” she says. “If you know something, you have to snitch, you have to tell. Would you rather have a friend be angry with you or have to live with a decision you made for the rest of your life?”

Laura adds that parents also should put GPS trackers in their kids’ phones and in their cars, “because, based on what I’ve now seen in my son’s phone, none of these kids are going where they say they’re going.”

And, speaking of Brandon’s phone, she says that it’s obvious that kids are “doing their research” about the different types of drugs — what they can expect if they take them and even where to buy them.

“There’s pictures of not only Brandon, but other kids — some of whom I don’t even know — taking drugs in pictures on his phone,” she says. “When I saw the messages about buying and selling and taking drugs and all of these pictures, I literally threw up.”

And, the other thing she wants to stress is that Brandon and his friends — some of whom go to Wharton, Wiregrass Ranch, Sunlake and Steinbrenner — are not what anyone would consider to be “druggies.”

“These are all smart kids who do great in school, from good families,” she says. “I hope people who read this story will take it to heart and start finding out what’s really going on with their children.”

As I was leaving Laura’s home, her friend Jen, who was with her the day she found out Brandon had passed, told me, “Brandon was the one who was supposed to make it big out of all these kids. Smart, talented and loved. No one could believe this happened to him.”

Laura also says she appreciates the amazing outpouring of support she has received from the community — at the candlelight vigil at Freedom a couple of days after Brandon died, at his memorial service on June 28 (both of which had as many as 500 people in attendance) and in the months since then. “It makes you feel good, as a mother, to hear so many people say so many wonderful things about your child. I just wish it wasn’t for this reason.” 

SB 278: Preventing Deaths from Drug-related Overdoses

(Known) as the “911 Good Samaritan Act; (the statute provides) that a person acting in good faith who seeks medical assistance for an individual experiencing a drug-related overdose may not be charged, prosecuted, or penalized for specified offenses in certain circumstances; providing that a person who experiences a drug-related overdose and needs medical assistance may not be charged, prosecuted, or penalized for specified offenses in certain circumstances; providing that the protections from prosecution for specified offenses are not grounds for suppression of evidence in other prosecutions; amending mitigating circumstances under which a departure from the lowest permissible criminal sentence is reasonably justified to include circumstances in which a defendant was making a good faith effort to obtain or provide medical assistance for an individual experiencing a drug-related overdose, etc.