invites a friend to sleep over. the next morning, she s dead. oh, my god! i don t feel a pulse. what in the world happened? how could this be? turned out this was no ordinary slumber party. we know from their phones that this was a planned event. they had discussed it. they took pictures. stories surfacing of a dangerous experiment. the main purpose of having the sleepover was to try it. an experiment that just might tempt other teens. we know it s entered our high school. why the clues in this mystery could save a life in your family. you have a lot of people watching dateline that need to talk to their kids. welcome to dateline. parents always worry there are so many dangers out in the world a teenager can face. but at a slumber party in your own basement? how could something deadly have found its way there? taken a bright, talented girl. and could it happen in your town, to your child? here s kate snow with one small dose. they re killing our k
a bright and beautiful teen invites a friend to sleep over. the next morning, she s dead. oh, my god! i don t feel a pulse. what in the world happened? how could this be? turned out this was no ordinary slumber party. we know from their phones that this was a planned event. they had discussed it. they took pictures. stories surfacing of a dangerous experiment. the main purpose of having the sleepover was to try it. an experiment that just might tempt other teens. we know it s entered our high school. why the clues in this mystery could save a life in your family. you have a lot of people watching dateline that need to talk to their kids. welcome to dateline. parents always worry there are so many dangers out in the world a teenager can face. but at a slumber party in your own basement? how could something deadly have found its way there? taken a bright, talented girl. and could it happen in your town, to your child? here s kate snow with one small d
dangerous experiment. the main purpose of having the sleepover was to try it. an experiment that just might tempt other teens. we know it s entered our high school. why the clues in this mystery could save a life in your family. you have a lot of people watching dateline that need to talk to their kids. welcome to dateline. parents always worry there are so many dangers out in the world a teenager can face. but at a slumber party in your own basement? how could something deadly have found its way there? taken a bright, talented girl. and could it happen in your town, to your child? here s kate snow with one small dose. they re killing our kids and we need to do something about it. reporter: it s a new threat. she was saying, erin, your best friend died, and she kept yelling that over and over. reporter: and these teens found out about it the hard way. it s made out to seem like one of those, you re not really going to see it in your life kind of
17-year-old tara fitzgerald had taken was really a deadly synthetic drug. people are generally just purporting it to be acid? yeah. i need acid, i go buy acid. reporter: cole matenaer was the local dealer who supplied the drugs to students at woodbury high. he admitted to police the tabs he was selling as lsd were really a synthetic drug called 25i. because people don t like that stuff. they think it s they know it s bad, you know? but you know it s 25i. yeah. had you ever heard of it before? never. we had never dealt with it before. reporter: 25i is a chemical that was only made illegal in the u. s. two months before tara died. it can cause hallucinations, like lsd. but in tara s case, it also led to seizures, respiratory distress and ultimately, cardiac arrest. it sometimes goes by the street name, n-bomb or smiles.
as lsd were really a synthetic drug called 25i. because people don t like that stuff. they think it s they know it s bad, you know? but you know it s 25i. yeah. had you ever heard of it before? never. we had never dealt with it before. reporter: 25i is a new chemical that was only made illegal in the u. s. two months before tara died. it can cause hallucinations, like lsd. but in tara s case, it also led to seizures, respiratory distress and ultimately, cardiac arrest. it sometimes goes by the street name, n-bomb or smiles. and detectives were about to show us the doses they d seized in tara s case. this is the size of it. wait, that s the drug on that little, tiny, pink piece of paper? it s smaller than my pinkie fingernail. typically packaged in tiny pieces of tinfoil, it almost looks like trash. but inside, the drugs are so potent, investigators have to handle them with gloves. the reason that detective