Melissa Gomez | (TNS) Los Angeles Times BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Ezekiel Xavier Rivera idolized his father. The 2-year-old loved to follow Raul Rivera around the house and ride in the car with him, said Soluna Lora, Ezekiel’s mother.
On June 3, 2023, Lora left the little boy with his father in Bakersfield while she took his older brother for a haircut. She and Rivera, who have three children together, are separated. When she returned to drop Ermias off too, Lora said, she spotted a bulge in Rivera’s sock.
It was a roll of cash and what she said she later learned was a baggie of drugs. She demanded that Rivera let her take the children home with her, but he refused. She never saw Ezekiel alive again.
Two days later, the toddler was dead from acute fentanyl toxicity; Ermias — who was 3 — had tested positive for the drug. Rivera now faces a first-degree murder charge in connection with one son’s death and a felony count of child cruelty, accused of exposing his other son. “They didn’t only lose their brother, they lost their father as well,” Lora said of Ermias, now 5, and his sister, EvaRose, 7.
“They loved being with him. ..
. Ezekiel loved [Rivera] so, so much.” As the fentanyl crisis ravages communities across the country, toddlers and infants increasingly are becoming unsuspecting victims of an opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin.
Adults make up the vast number of fentanyl-related deaths, but public health experts say they are alarmed that more.