Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. So, Erin, thank you for doing this with me today. We got connected through Laura Marquez Garrett, who is an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center. So let's. Let's start, though, getting to know your son, Avery. If you can just back up and tell us anything you want to tell us about him, any stories you want to share. I just love to get to know him.
B (0:26)
I mean, he was the sweetest guy. He. He had a superpower for kind of sensing who in the room was kind of struggling a little bit in his various services that we. We had through two different households in different places around the country. The reoccurring theme amongst all these kids was that, like, he would find them on, you know, a day when they were feeling down and. And make them feel good. He just checked just by checking in and sharing a smile, maybe a little joke, you know, some. There was a girl in Olympia at the Olympia High School who was sitting by herself all the time. And, you know, at lunchtime, and she said that he would leave his group of friends just to go sit with her, and it made her feel really good. And there was a guy in New York who had just got into his school out there this past fall. He was new military family, always moved around a lot. Didn't know anyone at the school. He didn't think anyone at the school knew his name. And Avery one day just went right up to him and said, hey, Brady, how are you doing today? And he said that it really helped him. And those stories just went on and on. They had a memorial in this school. They expected it to go an hour and ended up going all morning long with just all these different kids and different grades, too. It wasn't like he only stuck to his own age group. He would really just want to help anyone. And so it was like his dream was to become a psychologist. Is in, like this past time I saw him, that's what he was talking about a lot. And I think he would have made a really good one. I think this whole searching out MDMA is also from that. He had been reading and getting fed YouTube videos of all things about all these studies in MDMA and how it, you know, people on SSRIs who had PTSD do this one controlled study, and all of a sudden, you know, this one medication works for a long time, whereas, you know, I. To take SSRIs with all these negative side effects for years and like, that sort of thing. So I think that's what spurred his interest to search out that online. And unfortunately, it resulted in him dying in December, a couple days before Christmas.
A (3:24)
So Avery was active on Snapchat, and you knew about that, right?
B (3:31)
Yes, I did not. So social media in general was something that he only got access to in the. In the. Within a year of this happening? Um, yeah, it was something I. 15.
