Men gave 15-year-old girl alcohol, drugs on night of her death, affidavit says
Danielle Wheeler said in an interview with Wichita police that she’d spent the past few years trying to keep her son, 24-year-old Isaac Hord, alive through what she described as a serious fentanyl and Xanax addiction.
The 53-year-old woman told officers she couldn’t bear the idea of kicking him out and sending him to his death on the streets, an affidavit in her son’s homicide case said, so she tried to practice “harm reduction” inside her own walls — even as drug use, late-night guests and what she called an unconventional life became normal.
“Our way of life is just screwed up,” the affidavit said Wheeler told police. “It is, sure. But it’s unfortunately how we’ve survived it. And I’m not saying that we always make the most ethical or smart decisions.”
But the environment she allowed in hopes of protecting her son instead became the setting of a teen girl’s overdose death.
Hord, 24-year-old Niklas Wiley and 15-year-old Kennedy Herren were spending the night at Wheeler’s southeast Wichita home on Sept. 13. Wheeler told police that she and Wiley had a couple of alcohol shooters before she went to bed around 4 a.m. on Sept. 14. She said she heard the trio laughing and listening to music as she fell asleep.
When morning came, Wheeler said, she was woken up by wailing coming from her son’s room. She found Wiley crying and Herren pale and blue-lipped, unconscious on the floor. Herren was taken to a hospital but was pronounced dead just after 9 a.m., according to the court document. Her death was determined to be a result of toxicity from cocaine, oxycodone, fentanyl and bromazolam.
Investigators spoke with Wiley, who said that he’d been close with Herren for about two years, but they weren’t officially dating, although they had had sexual relations several times, the affidavit said.
Before going to Wheeler’s apartment, Wiley said Herren told him she had taken a Percocet, which contains oxycodone, earlier in the day. Upon arriving at Wheeler’s home, Wiley said, he and Hord started drinking. Wiley, Hord and Herren then drank and used drugs through the night, Wiley and Hord said.
Hord later told police that he knew drugs couldn’t be mixed safely — he’d overdosed four times himself — and said he and his mother kept Narcan on the property because of that. He also said he was so high that he wasn’t thinking about the fact that a 15-year-old girl was using drugs in his room.
“Isaac said that he ‘should have been more responsible’ in the situation. He said that he is a ‘leader’ and shouldn’t have let a fifteen-year-old girl be in his room where drugs were being used,” the affidavit read.
Wheeler has been charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter and one count of endangering a child. Hord and Wiley have each been charged with first degree murder and aggravated child endangerment. They all have preliminary hearings set for Nov. 20.
