Orange Beach mother looks to help addicts after losing daughter to fentanyl overdose

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. ( WKRG ) — 25-year-old Skyelar Sanders of Orange Beach was a daughter, a sister, a mother of a 5-year-old little girl, and she was addicted to fentanyl.

“She was really trying hard, but these drugs have such a grasp,” her mom, Kelley Sanders, said. “Sometimes it’s too much to get away from.”

It was an addiction Sanders said her daughter Skyelar struggled with for years.

Saturday night, her addiction ended.

“Went to the house, unlocked the door and she was on the floor, and Narcan wasn’t going to help at that point,” Sanders said.

Sanders believes earlier in the day, Gerald Anderson, Madison Hayek, Malia Decautur and Roshell Benson gave her daughter the drugs that killed her.

“There’s a Snapchat video right now going around with one of the girls showing all of the drugs that she had,” Sanders said.

Over the years, she said she did everything she could to help her daughter: tough love, love, even jail, but nothing worked.

“We just had this conversation this last week that you don’t know when that one time is going to be the last time,” Sanders said. “You don’t know.”

She said she would like to be angry at all four of the suspects now accused of her daughter’s death, but she’s not.

“Those girls, they are her age,” Sanders said. “They were her friends. They are just caught up in some bad stuff and they are somebody’s daughter and somebody’s mom too. She is not here anymore. I pray that this is their chance.”

Drug overdoses have now overtaken suicides in Baldwin County as the number one cause of unnatural deaths. The majority of those overdoses involve fentanyl.

Kelley Sanders said it is not going to get any better until fentanyl is off the streets, but tougher consequences like those manslaughter charges could help.

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