Preston County native remembers her son who was poisoned by fentanyl

ALBRIGHT, W.Va. (WBOY) — At approximately 5:08 p.m. on Sept. 17, 2021, a group of fishermen found 23-year-old Jeffrey Uphold II dead in the Monongahela River with an immense amount of fentanyl in his system—enough that his death was ruled a homicide. More than three years later, his mother is still looking for answers as to how her son lost his life.

Joellen Uphold told 12 News that her son was an outgoing child who played various sports growing up like soccer, baseball and football. She said that her son “had a big surrounding of friends, he was very likable.”

“If you knew Jeffrey, you loved him,” said Uphold. “He was one of those people that was fun to be around.”

She said that her son dabbled in marijuana during his teenage years, but she never really worried about him getting into anything more. “He worked, he was very good at anything he did,” Uphold added. “His dad was a mechanic, and he took after him on that, and was very good at that as well.”

However, Joellen said that when Jeffrey landed a new job that paid him “a ridiculous amount of money,” in exchange for 15-16 hour days, seven days a week, he began using other drugs to help him get through it, a habit that started his path to addiction.

Joellen said that Jeffrey also struggled with depression, which may have also been a factor in his drug usage. But by the time Jeffrey finally came forward to his mother about his addiction, she said that he had been using for almost two years.

“It’s a horrible, horrible thing for any parent to have to go through,” Joellen said. “Until you’ve dealt with addiction with your child or a family member or a loved one, you really don’t understand it. It is a choice, that they make from the beginning, but once they make that choice, it’s no longer their choice.”

At one point, Jeffrey even went to a rehabilitation facility in California to seek out help. But his mother said that when he returned to West Virginia, he began using again within two weeks.

Joellen last spoke to her son on Sept. 13, 2021, and said that after that, there was no activity on his phone.

“Even in Jeffrey’s worst addiction, he always reached out to me within 24 hours, no matter what,” she said. “Whether I wanted to hear it or not, I always heard from him, and I knew there was something wrong.”

On Sept. 15, Uphold filed a missing person report with the Morgantown Police Department. She told 12 News that the department usually won’t file a report until the person of interest has been missing for a longer period, but the department helped because Jeffrey had developed a positive relationship with them.

For the rest of the week, the Morgantown Police Department helped Jeffrey’s family and close friends look for him but had no luck. That Friday evening, Jeffrey’s body was found.

“He was down behind the arboretum, floating in the Mon River,” Joellen said. “They estimated that he had been there 24-36 hours.”

Jeffrey’s body was taken to Charleston for an autopsy, which revealed an amount of fentanyl in his system so large that his case was able to be ruled a homicide. “It’s approximately enough to kill 27 people,” said Joellen. “Jeffrey was murdered, this was not an overdose.”

Joellen told 12 News that the autopsy results also revealed that Jeffrey was dead for at least two hours before his body was thrown into the river. She also said that his phone was found in his pocket.

“The fact that the way Jeffrey was taken from us, I’ve never really got to grieve for Jeffrey’s death,” Joellen said. “It is a horror that you live every day. It’s the first thing that I think of when I wake up, it’s the last thing I think of when I go to bed.”

Joellen said that although it’s been more than three years since Jeffrey passed away, it doesn’t get any easier for her. “We didn’t get to see our son. We had to look at him in recovery photos to believe that it was him,” she said. “I didn’t get to touch him, I didn’t get to hug him because we weren’t given the choice.”

Although she’s still living with constant pain from her son’s death, Joellen has tried to align herself with other organizations that will allow her to share what happened to Jeffrey. She’s been active in one organization called Lost Voi c es of Fentanyl, occasionally traveling with the group to Washington D.C. to keep Jeffrey’s story alive.

Joellen also engages with an organization called Trail of Truth, which has a local branch in Morgantown. She told 12 News that she sometimes goes with them to paint headstones of local gravesites that belong to someone who passed away from drug use.

“Once you go through this, you get connected with parents and become a group,” said Joellen. “To stop it from coming across the border, stop it from killing our children that are, you know, addicts or not even addicts.”

Joellen said that she struggles every year from September to January as it’s the time period between when Jeffrey died and his birthday. She said that fall used to be her favorite time of year, but it’s been permanently soiled for her because it marks Jeffrey’s death date for her.

“It makes me sick to my stomach now,” Uphold said. “Because whenever we have the cold night and the warm days, it makes me think of the days we searched for Jeffrey.”

Joellen sometimes goes to the Monongahela River to honor her son.

“I go to his recovery site on his ‘angel-versary,’ to either send flowers or to just be there. It gives me peace, I think maybe because you know that’s where God revealed him and brought him forth.”

She added that it’s important for people to be careful when using recreational drugs, emphasizing the importance of carrying fentanyl test strips and Narcan.

“It can happen to anyone,” said Uphold. “We need stronger laws. We need people that are selling this drug that is killing people not selling it to an addict for a high. They’re killing people, they need to have harsher punishments.”

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