A GRIEVING mother has revealed she was sent a letter by Donald and Melania Trump after she wrote to them about her two sons who died from a fentanyl overdose.
Margie and Matthew Kochman from Long Island, New York, spoke to The U.S. Sun about how their sons died after taking a pill that they didn’t know had been laced with the deadly synthetic heroin substitute fentanyl.
Billy Kochmann was 44 and Eugene was 41. Billy had a son who was 11 at the time.
Matthew described how Billy had been shoveling snow on his neighbor’s driveway when his back started hurting and he was given a pill to ease the pain.
But what he thought was a painkiller turned out to have been laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“His younger brother found him dead in the snow,” Matthew said.
Just nine months later and only days before Thanksgiving that same year, Eugene died from a separate fentanyl incident after he was given the drugs by a friend.
“Nobody should have to go through what my family has gone through,” Margie said.
Margie and Matthew had traveled down to Washington DC to attend this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), because of a touching letter they were sent by Donald and Melania Trump.
“President Trump and Melania sent me a beautiful letter last year about my sons,” she said.
Matthew also said his 34-year-old nephew had died only last week from the deadly drug.
“So many families are affected,” he said. “It’s criminal.”
Holding in his emotions, Matthew described his sons as “great young kids,” with their own pest control business, the latest victims in America’s devastating fentanyl crisis which pushed the number of fatal overdoses in the US to its highest-ever level of 112,000 in 2023.
“I miss them,” Margie said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue as her husband put an arm around her. “And my grandson has no father now.”
The pair were adamant that the only person who could “stand up to anybody” and fix America’s spiraling drug crisis was President Trump.
“We need our president back,” Matthew said. “He’s the only one who can straighten out this mess and get it done.”
The fentanyl crisis was brought up by many attendees at this year’s CPAC, an event that sees thousands of grassroots conservatives descend on Washington DC for four days of speakers, events, and screenings.
Karen Tully from Baltimore, Maryland, said she was most scared about fentanyl coming over the border.
She accused Joe Biden’s belated efforts to tackle the crisis which has exploded under his watch as being largely down to his flatlining polling figures.
“I judge him for not understanding the pain and sorrow fentanyl causes,” she said.
Howard Wooldridge, a former cop now part of the LEAP or Law Enforcement Action Partnership, claimed America had been tackling the drug crisis the wrong way for years.
He told the U.S. Sun: “We need to teach drugs as a medical issue not a criminal one.”
Howard, a retired police detective from Fort Worth, Texas, wore a cowboy hat and a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: “Cop says legalize heroin – ask me why.”
He said he had come to CPAC because he liked to go where people frequently disagree with him, and because he has seen the damage that America’s treatment of the drugs crisis has led to.
“I can do a much better job of protecting you and your family from bad guys if I stop wasting time on somebody’s personal problem of taking drugs.”
He called for America to adopt a “Swiss” model to tackling fentanyl – offering treatment to those who want it on day one.
“All the medical science says you do not throw someone in a jail cell if you want to help them with their personal drug problem,” he added.
“Ten teenagers are shot every day in America selling drugs because prohibition is giving them a job option.”
Also at CPAC on Wednesday, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Steve Bannon addressed a room packed full of supporters.
And on Thursday, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump also spoke in the main hall.
