The mother of Jake Ehlinger, the Texas football player
who died of an “accidental” drug overdose in 2021, is sharing her son’s story (watch the video) to warn others about the dangers of illicit fentanyl. In May 2021, Austin police found Jake Ehlinger, a 20-year-old student and linebacker at the University of Texas, unresponsive at his college residence. He died just a few weeks before his older brother, Sam Ehlinger, was selected by the Indianapolis Colts in the NFL draft.
More than two years later, Jena Ehlinger is speaking out about the death of her youngest son in the hopes that it will prevent other families from experiencing the same loss. In a video posted last week on Fentanyl.tv, a platform for sharing educational content on the opioid crisis, Jena describes Jake as a smart, joyful child who was always smiling, playing chess and obsessing over football.
“He was tough, probably thought he was a little invincible. Jake didn’t want to die,” she says. “He watched a movie with his roommates, took a Xanax, get rid of some anxiety, try to sleep, deal with all the pressure he was dealing with…that was it. And then his sweet roommate had to find him.”
In October 2021, Jake’s family released a statement attributing his death to an “accidental overdose of what was believed to be Xanax laced with toxic drugs including deadly fentanyl,” referring to the synthetic opioid that is 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine. Deaths from fentanyl poisoning have risen sharply in Texas, from 212 in 2018 to 2,189 in 2022, according to the governor’s office and preliminary data from the Texas Department of State Health Services. That’s a 932 percent increase.
The family said in their statement that they felt it was important to share the details of Jake’s death to “help shed light on this problem and prevent other families from also tragically losing a loved one.” Jena’s video had the same goal. The grieving mother said she didn’t even know what fentanyl was until her son died.
“It’s so scary out there,” she said. “You are playing Russian roulette every time you touch a drug. It is a massive crisis in our country that is not being handled how it needs to be handled.”
Like his older brother, Jake played at Westlake before joining the Texas program as a walk-on in 2019. He played at Texas for two seasons and was a two-time member of the Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll.
