Two Ole Miss students found dead near retail kratom as Mississippi races toxicology results

Two University of Mississippi students were found dead with packaged kratom nearby, and Mississippi officials are racing toxicology results while warning the public to avoid the unregulated substance.

Aidan Hamilton, an 18-year-old freshman from Englewood, Colorado, was found dead in his dorm at the University of Mississippi on Monday. That same day, Robert Strang, a 20-year-old junior from Atlanta, died at an off-campus apartment.

CBS Colorado reported that Lafayette County Metro Narcotics found packaged kratom sold from a retail store near both bodies. Law enforcement does not yet know if the deaths were related or if kratom caused either one.

Mississippi officials are fast-tracking toxicology reports and warning people to avoid kratom out of an abundance of caution. The substance is not a federally controlled drug, and rules still vary widely by state.

Young deaths under sudden scrutiny leave families and campuses searching for answers, much like the questions that followed when a Miss Austria titleholder died at 22.

Separate scenes, same unanswered substance question

The New York Post reported the two cases are not believed connected and remain under separate death investigations. Family statements made the human cost plain.

“We are heartbroken by the loss of our dear son and are trying to process this unimaginable loss,” Strang’s family spokesperson told The Post.

Hamilton’s family said through the university that Aidan “was a bright, wonderful young man who was taken too soon. He is greatly missed.”

Kratom products can be bought at gas stations across the country. Clinicians say the commercial versions now on shelves look little like the natural leaf chewed for hundreds of years in Southeast Asia.

Steve Carleton, chief clinical officer at Porch Light Health, said his addiction treatment practice is seeing more patients tied to these products.

“We’re seeing it more and more,” Carleton said.

He described manufacturers boosting a chemical in the plant called 7-OH, the part that produces opioid-like effects, far beyond natural levels.

“They’re putting 300% to 400% more of this 7-OH into this kratom plant. That is what is risky for people with overdose deaths and addiction.”

Carleton added that the products come in pills, gummies, and other forms built to look commercially appealing. “It’s not a safe substance,” he said. He also urged loved ones of users to carry Narcan, the overdose-reversal drug that can work on these effects, and not to try using it on themselves.

Campus warnings about powerful synthetic opioids circulating among students only raise the stakes while toxicology is still pending, a pattern familiar from other sudden student deaths under investigation.

State pressure mounts while federal scheduling stalls

Fox News reported that toxicology results could arrive as early as next week after Gov. Tate Reeves pledged state resources to speed them up. Narcotics detectives are on both cases. Authorities have not ruled out foul play.

Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said final judgments wait on autopsy findings, statements, and evidence. If unlawful fentanyl delivery turns up as a cause, Parker’s Law, a 2022 statute that allows criminal charges when illegal fentanyl delivery kills someone, could come into play.

Separate arrests at a local tobacco shop involved narcotics that included kratom and THC products. Any link to the student deaths remains unclear.

Mississippi officials have also had to confront public blame and investigative heat in other young-person death cases, including the Nolan Wells probe that drew FBI attention.

Colorado’s earlier death pushed labeling and age rules

Daniel Bregger, a 33-year-old Denver man, died in 2021 from an overdose of kratom and diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in Benadryl. His family believes he bought the product online as a holistic anxiety treatment.

His father, David Bregger, later told CBS Colorado he had never even heard of kratom before. He said the products carried no labeling instructions on the packages or the website, and that the dose proved lethal.

“There were no labeling instructions whatsoever on them, nor on their website. And so it was a lethal dose.”

Last year Colorado passed the Daniel Bregger Act. Among other steps, it bans sales to anyone under 21, caps the amount of 7-OH in products, and requires clear labeling. Mississippi has similar regulations. The DEA recently proposed temporarily placing concentrated 7-OH products into Schedule I, but that has not happened yet.

David Bregger framed the Colorado law in blunt terms: “It’s a plague in Colorado, and the legislation will save a lot of lives. And that’s what I’m in it for, to save lives in Dan’s memory.”

Misty Brown, a Colorado kratom advocate, draws a sharp line between forms of the product. She says whole-leaf powder helped her leave opioid addiction, while the synthetic 7-OH versions pull people the other way.

“Whole leaf kratom powder is an exit from addiction. These synthetic 7-OH products that are out here is an entrance into one.”

Public addiction battles that end in death still leave hard questions for families and policymakers, as seen when Presley Gerber died in rehab at 27 after documenting his struggle.

What remains unknown

Investigators still lack confirmed toxicology results for Hamilton and Strang. They have not named brands, doses, or the exact retail sources of the packages found at the scenes. They have not said whether other substances were present. The federal scheduling proposal for concentrated 7-OH remains pending.

Until those answers arrive, two college families are burying sons, a campus is grieving, and a loosely regulated product that can be sold like candy remains on shelves.

Parents and taxpayers should not have to learn the hard way that a gas-station high can outrun the rules meant to protect their kids.