Sean and Afrodita Foster’s living room doesn’t have a Christmas tree.
Instead, it’s lined with a growing stack of sympathy cards, framed posters and signed sports equipment.
The end of January will mark three years since their son, Cayden, didn’t wake up on a morning he should have been getting ready for school. They’d later learn he died from a fentanyl overdose while on a FaceTime call with a friend.
One of his last Google searches, Sean said, was about how to tell whether a pill is real or fake.
Ever since Cayden died, the two have worked with prosecutors and detectives, hoping for accountability. Experts warned them that cases such as their son’s are difficult, and rarely get prosecuted.
But years later, Sean, Afrodita and dozens of Cayden’s friends packed a Harrisonburg, Virginia, federal courtroom, as two people who admitted distributing the fentanyl that killed him were sentenced to over a decade behind bars.
“Everybody else in the courtroom will be getting up on Thursday and celebrating Christmas with family, enjoy this time of being together,” Sean said. “We’re going to go to the cemetery. That’s where we spend holidays and Sundays. That’s the only place we get through the holidays.”
The couple remained involved in the case, navigating evolving circumstances. Eventually, the Drug Enforcement Administration accepted it. Then, there was a leadership change in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia.
Sean, an attorney, built a slideshow outlining recommendations for how to prosecute the case. They collected gigabytes of Snapchat data. They provided statements and spoke in front of the court.
“It’s not the TV drama,” Sean said. “It’s not ‘Law and Order,’ where in 60 minutes you’re going to go front to back and quickly closed, and everything’s tied up neatly and everybody’s done their job. It’s just been exhausting.”
But last week, a federal judge sentenced 24-year-old Liam Conaway to 20 years in a federal prison. Prosecutors said he admitted obtaining the fentanyl-laced pills and selling them to Foster.
Conaway was a student at James Madison University, and prosecutors said Cayden and Conaway had consumed pills together during Conaway’s school break from JMU.
Charging documents said Cayden contacted Conaway to buy pills.
On Jan. 27, 2023, court documents said Cayden sent Conaway $105 on Venmo to pay for the drugs. Conaway bought about 10 pills from Bessy Jimenez Mejia, his supplier, in Harrisonburg.
The pills, documents said, were designed to look like 30 mg Percocet pills but were counterfeit and contained fentanyl.
Then, one of Cayden’s friends delivered three pills to him in Northern Virginia.
Jimenez Mejia was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.
“I don’t think there will ever be closure,” Afrodita said. “But we just have to live with what happened.”
In the years since Cayden’s death, the couple has worked with Virginia state lawmakers and spoken to Northern Virginia students about the dangers of fentanyl. They’re planning to continue that work.
“It was a distraction for us,” Afrodita said. “We still, when we think about it, are shocked by our son’s death. The advocacy was important to us, because from the beginning, we said we don’t want this to happen to another child.”
Many of Cayden’s friends, now in college, have remained in contact with his parents, offering support and companionship.
Afrodita still won’t enter Cayden’s room, and his seat at the table just off the kitchen is marked with a plush pillow.
But with a yearslong investigation and court proceedings behind them, they’re planning to prioritize their grief. Part of that is getting Cayden’s gravestone marker done.
“We were just emotionally not ready for that,” Afrodita said. “It’s one more final thing to do, and we just haven’t been able to do that.”
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