‘I owe the world to them.’ KS dad grateful to cops after sentencing in daughter’s death
A Grandview man has been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for the 2021 fentanyl death of Olivia Piotrowski, a Shawnee Mission East senior.
Cameron B. Bryant, 28, was sentenced this week to 140 months in Olivia’s death. He pleaded guilty in late March to distribution of a controlled substance causing death.
Andrew Piotrowski, who attended nearly every court hearing Bryant had, told The Star Thursday that he and his family are forever grateful to the police officers who investigated his daughter’s death, as well as the prosecutors who handled her case.
As his voice broke when he talked about his daughter, who was 18 when she died, he said he didn’t doubted the determination of the Kansas City Police Department — including Det. Frank Rorabaugh and Det. Jeremy Gragg — and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Even though he’s come to realize in the past nearly three years how difficult fentanyl-related deaths are to investigate and prosecute.
“I think from the beginning, they were going to do everything within their legal powers to find some sort of justice,” Piotrowski, of Johnson County, said. “I mean, when they couldn’t find him (Bryant) the DEA ended up adding more US Marshals to help. They were doing what they needed to do to get this guy.”
And investigators with the Kansas City Police Department, led by Sgt. Aaron Benson, worked to make sure prosecutors had a solid case to present in court, Piotrowski said. Olivia died in Kansas City and the pill that killed her was purchased in Olathe.
“For the Piotrowskis, we owe a lot of gratitude to everyone that was part of that,” he said. “They could easily just gave up (the) cold case, and be like, ‘eh, we can’t do anything, we’re done.’ DEA could have. The officer could have been like, ‘I’m not going down this road anymore.’
“But they did this for Olivia and for her family.”
The Star wrote about Olivia’s death in last year’s series, “Deadly Dose,” which detailed the toll fentanyl has taken in recent years on the Kansas City area. The Star found that more than 850 people in the nine-county area have died from the illicit drug since 2018 and that those deaths can be difficult to investigate with just a fraction presented to a prosecutor for charges.
In mid-September 2021, Olivia died after she smoked a pill that she and two friends thought was Percocet. Each of the girls bought a pill for $30 apiece.
At their respective homes, they logged onto their school laptops and connected through an online video chat program. They smoked the pills.
According to court records, Olivia began to rock back and forth and her friends sensed she wasn’t feeling well. One of them told her to try to vomit.
The next morning, Olivia was found dead.
It wasn’t until June of last year that Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe’s office charged Bryant who sold the pill that killed Olivia.
“We’re losing way too many people to this horrible drug, especially a large number of teenagers and young adults,” Howe told The Star Thursday. “When her case occurred, fentanyl was still on the rise, and I do truly think that the kids were thinking they were getting Percocet.”
Fentanyl deaths are very difficult cases for law enforcement, Howe said.
“You’ve got instances where there are multiple drugs being ingested by some users, which then makes it difficult for the medical examiner to say that fentanyl is the sole cause of death,” Howe said. “So that’s a problem. “
The other impediment, he said, is being able to access phones which can tell investigators who the person purchased the illicit drug from.
“Many times the investigation is just short circuited because you can’t prove who gave the drugs on a certain date, time that caused the death,” he said. “These are difficult, but, they’re important in light of the scope of the fentanyl problem in our community.”
Olivia was a “beautiful red-headed girl,” her father said. “She had aspirations of being a model.”
She loved the beach, he told The Star, and being a “great big sister” to her brother, Axel. She also enjoyed being around family and friends and was there for them in trying times, he said.
“She was just a great person,” Olivia’s father said. “She was always joking around. There isn’t a darn person that was ever around her that she couldn’t make laugh.
“She was one of those kids full of life. She had a lot of future.”
Around Easter of this year, Piotrowski and his family took a trip to the beach where they always feel close to Olivia. During that time period, there was a court hearing where Bryant was going to enter his guilty plea. And Piotrowski was going to miss it.
But he felt that someone needed to be there for Olivia.
“And Sgt. Benson went to court for me,” Piotrowski said. “He said, ‘I will be there for you and represent Olivia.’ He didn’t have to do that.”
It’s why, Piotrowski said, he’s so grateful for those who fought for his daughter.
“I owe the world to them.”
