Logan Webb was getting married in 48 hours. His day was a nonstop rush of errands and excitement: picking up the tux, greeting arriving family members, juggling a slew of last-minute arrangements.
He had no idea that Dec. 3, 2021, would become one of the worst days of his life.
“That whole night was a blur,” the Giants’ right-handed ace said. “It was things you never want to see, body bags, stuff like that. You feel like it’s not real. We were there in the parking lot of that Safeway from midnight until 3 or 4 a.m. I had to try to go through that weekend like everything was normal. And it wasn’t normal.”
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There is nothing normal about trying to celebrate one of the happiest days of your life while simultaneously feeling unshakable grief and loss. There is nothing normal about a 20-year-old taking one counterfeit pain pill and dying in the bathroom of a grocery store. There is nothing normal about the death and destruction that fentanyl, and those who peddle it, are causing in communities across the country.
Kade Webb had so much to look forward to. The last time his family saw him, he was hopping into an Uber to get a haircut so he would look sharp for his cousin’s wedding. Earlier that week, he had bought a new suit jacket. He and his girlfriend, Brooklyn Billick, had picked out a name for the baby girl they were expecting in another month. His goofy personality was a source of so much joy to his family.
Six months later, his family continues to process the shock, the sadness, the emptiness, and yes, the anger that comes in waves.
Logan Webb raised his stature and became one of the game’s best starting pitchers last season when he led the Giants to the NL West title and had two brilliant starts against the Dodgers in the NL Division Series. He recognizes that his stature gives him a platform. He is using it to share his family’s personal heartache because he doesn’t want anyone else to endure a similar tragedy. He wants justice for his cousin, Kade, who was more like a brother to him. And he wants some shred of good to come out of such a senseless loss.
“These are kids who have so much life ahead of them,” Logan said. “Kade’s life was taken because some piece of shit decided to sell him something that had fentanyl in it. I don’t want to cuss but it makes me so mad. It’s not fair to these kids who are passing away. It’s not fair to their families who want to see them grow up and become parents and live their lives. It’s a sad, sad thing that’s going on.
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“I just want people to be aware of it. And I don’t want to see these dealers keep getting away with it, either.”
Kurt Webb cleared the last chiropractic appointment on his schedule and checked the time.
He was already running late and there was so much to do. His nephew’s rehearsal dinner was the next day. There was a golf tournament scheduled for the morning. He stopped at a sporting goods store to pick up tees and balls as his phone buzzed with messages from several text groups the family had going. For a fleeting moment, he wondered why Kade, his only son, hadn’t answered.
Kurt continued to his brother’s house in Rocklin, northeast of Sacramento. Eric Webb, Logan’s father, had a couple extra sets of golf clubs, including one that he’d set aside for Kade. The house was a rush of activity with family members coming and going. Kurt was talking to Chase, Logan’s younger brother, who was nearer to Kade’s age and his constant companion, when a feeling came over him.
“All of a sudden it was like this wave of stress,” Kurt Webb said. “Where’s Kade?”
Kurt texted his ex-wife and Kade’s mother, Elizabeth Dillender, who lived in Texas but kept location services activated for her kids on her cell phone. No, she said, she hadn’t heard from him. Neither had Brooklyn, his girlfriend.
“It wasn’t really out of the ordinary, you know, trying to track down a 20-year-old,” Kurt said. “Then Liz texts back and says he’s at a Safeway in Roseville. My stomach sort of dropped. Why would he be in a Safeway a town over? That’s when I said, ‘OK, I’m jamming down there.'”
As Kurt Webb was backing out of his brother’s driveway, Logan and his fiancée, Sharidan Morales, were pulling in.
“I asked him where he was going,” Logan said. “I texted Kade and said, ‘Hey, answer your phone. We’re trying to find you.'”
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Kurt Webb pulled into the Safeway parking lot and was confronted with a confusion of flashing lights: ambulances, fire engines, police vehicles. He got out of his car. He had his wife, Andrea, on the phone. He couldn’t say a word. He didn’t want to speak his greatest fear into existence.
“And that’s when I saw the gurney come out of the Safeway,” he said. “It was empty but the paramedic, she looked me right in the eyes. And I knew.”
He collapsed to the asphalt. Between heaves and wails, he was able to tell his wife the awful news. He was not alone in the parking lot for long. Logan took charge of the situation, called his uncle and told him that the family was on the way. Logan took responsibility for calling his mother, both his grandmothers and Kade’s brother, who lived in Las Vegas.
“I just had to make sure everyone knew,” Logan said. “We’re a very close family. I was going to make sure we were there for my aunt and uncle as long as we needed to be.” They stood in that parking lot past 3 a.m. as Placer County Sheriff’s deputies and the coroner secured the scene.
Just a week earlier, the county’s Deputy District Attorney, Devan Portillo, had met with detectives to discuss the epidemic of fentanyl-related overdoses and fatalities. They were targeting several suspected dealers in the area. The next time a call came in with a suspected link to fentanyl, everyone was to be alerted immediately. Kade’s case was the first one that the task force converged upon.
By the time Logan made it to bed, it was past 4 a.m. He got an hour of sleep at most. The last thing he felt like doing was lacing up golf spikes and teeing off at sunrise. But people had flown in from all over for his wedding weekend. He felt he had no choice but to go through the motions, beginning with his golf tournament. Giants pitchers Sammy Long and Tyler Rogers were in his foursome, along with former Giants minor league pitcher Mac Marshall.
“I had to tell them what had just happened,” Logan said. “I’m trying to play golf but I couldn’t keep my mind on anything else. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Kade was supposed to be in one of those foursomes. He would’ve been wearing a Giants hat. Since I got drafted, every time I saw him, he was wearing a Giants hat.
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“We did family stuff together. We went to Disneyland together. He and my brother (Chase) were two peas in a pod, always hanging out and laughing together. He had the best smile in the world. He was always thinking about other people. He was just a beautiful kid.
“He was my cousin, but he was more like a brother.”
Logan Webb (back middle) and Kade (front middle) with family members on the day Logan signed with the Giants (Courtesy of the Webb family)The window would be rolled down. Whenever Kade sat in the passenger seat, it was always rolled down.
He’d stick his head out and strike up conversations with the driver in the next lane. He’d do voices and create characters. He had several alter egos who made regular appearances. When it was his night to make dinner, he’d become Jean Luc De Lechh, an internationally famous chef, complete with a French accent. “Ahhh am Jean Luc and I will make zee stir fry fohhhr hyouuu!”
“He’d stay in character the whole time,” his mother, Elizabeth Dillender, said.
When he got his wisdom teeth removed a year ago, he looked a fright. His mouth was packed with gauze, he had icepacks on both sides of his jaw and he wore a mesh sleeve over his head to keep them in place — making him look like a cross between a Teletubby and a grocery store pear. It wasn’t how anyone would want to be seen in public. But there was Kade, sticking his head out the window, waving both hands, telling drivers in the next lane that he’d just gotten all four wisdom teeth out.
“I’d be in tears in the car with him,” Dillender said. “People just cracked up when they were around him.”
He loved skateboarding as far back as anyone could remember. When he lived in Redwood City, he’d take the train into San Francisco to go to Under the Bridge Skatepark. Then snowboarding became his winter passion. For two seasons, he lived at Boreal Inn in Truckee and worked at Soda Springs and Sugarbowl, earning promotions both times.
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“When he tried something, he succeeded at it,” Dillender said. “He was just so passionate. When he loved, he loved hard. He was great at work, super committed, always on time. Never had an enemy, never been in a fight. He was the guy everyone loved being around.
“If your car broke down, he’d fix it. And if he didn’t know how to do it, he’d YouTube it.”
He played baseball growing up, along with everyone else in the Webb family. Logan was the oldest of his cousins and Kade naturally looked up to him. They bonded over their mutual love of Raiders football.
“He loved sports, loved his cousins, loved baseball,” Kurt Webb said. “He just loved. He was a 20-year-old kid in a 20-year-old’s world, along with all the stresses, all the unknowns. Just like we all had, of course, and still do.”
He was self-taught on the piano. He could hear a song and play it by ear. As soon as he’d sit down to bust out some Coldplay, his German shepherd, Athena, whom he raised from a puppy, would rush into the room and sit next to him on the piano bench. He loved customizing his car and had plans to start a clothing line. His thin mustache was almost always framing a wide smile.
One night in his mom’s backyard, he saw that a bee had landed in the hot tub and was struggling on the surface of the water. He lifted it out.
“And he sat with it,” Dillender said. “He made sure it didn’t go back in the water. He sat with it until it dried off. He made sure it could fly away.”
Tyler Beede could tell something was off.
The former Giants right-hander had flown to Sacramento to serve as the officiant at Logan and Sharidan’s wedding. When he arrived for the rehearsal, he noticed that everyone seemed a bit subdued.
“That’s when Webby’s dad told me,” Beede said. “Logan, he was just crushed by it. He was super close to Kade. I know he hadn’t seen him as much as he wanted to. It blindsided him and I felt for him. He was keeping things tight to his chest and suppressing a lot of emotions while trying to enjoy his wedding at the same time.”
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Logan told his Uncle Kurt, his Aunt Andrea and their two daughters, Gia and Addy, that they were under no obligation to attend the wedding. He told them he wished he could reschedule it. When he walked down the aisle and scanned the assembled faces, he didn’t know whether they would be there or not.
“And there they were,” he said. “They all came. Seeing them in the crowd, it made my heart hurt. But it also made me feel so good. I know my uncle. He didn’t want to take away from the wedding, which is really shitty to think about. A family wedding is great, but how do you keep going on? After something like that happened to a family as close as ours? People kept coming up to him, talking to him. What are you supposed to say?”
“Basically, we were in a trance,” Kurt said. “The wedding, we couldn’t let anything spoil that. It’s such a big day. But you’re almost going through the motions.”
During the ceremony, Logan and Sharidan acknowledged a moment of silence for those who had passed on, with Kade earning special mention. Beede, who prides himself on “being short and sweet and getting everyone to the open bar,” tailored his remarks to focus on the supportive nature of family and friends.
“As they go through this marriage together, it’s not just them on an island,” Beede told the gathering. “It’s everybody here who witnesses it. We get to enjoy this day together. Then we get to walk with them and encourage them through good times and bad times. We are welcoming family and friends into this marriage because you’re part of this journey, too. With the support of people who love us, we’re all trying to become better husbands, better wives, better people.”
Beede knew it would be a fun reception from the moment he arrived prior to the ceremony and saw a group of guests tailgating in the parking lot, serving mixed drinks out of a flatbed pickup.
“When Webby walked out, it was loud, man — like he was coming out to pitch,” Beede said. “He really wanted his cousin to be a part of that day however he could, even in spirit.”
Logan Webb pitching for the Giants earlier this month (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)Kade Webb left so many things behind. One of them was his cell phone.
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It had everything detectives were hoping to find. Gathering evidence against drug dealers can be a challenge because so many of them advertised and sold pills through story posts on Snapchat or other social media sites that disappear after 24 hours. But Kade had inadvertently saved information that police needed to arrest and charge Carson David Schewe, a 20-year-old from Roseville.
The Roseville Police Crime Suppression Unit and Placer Special Investigations Unit said they found more than $100,000 cash, an unregistered handgun and fentanyl-laced pills when they arrested Schewe in January on charges of possession of narcotics for sale and transporting controlled substances.
Those are not the only charges that Schewe will face, however. For the first time in Placer County, the DA’s office is charging an alleged drug dealer with murder in connection to a fentanyl death.
When Kade Webb swallowed the pill that took his life, he thought he was taking Percocet — a prescription opioid pain medication that contains acetaminophen and oxycodone. What the pill actually contained was potentially hundreds of times more potent. A fatal dose of fentanyl is just 2 milligrams. A few grains of sand, basically.
Schewe is charged with second-degree murder in addition to possession and sale charges. He has entered a not guilty plea, and is being held without bail. The case is in the pretrial stage and a preliminary hearing is expected to take place at some point this summer.
Fentanyl-involved deaths in Placer County have more than tripled since 2019, according to data provided by the Sherriff’s Department. There were nine fatal overdoses in 2019. In 2020, it was 24. There were 33 last year. All deputies and correctional officers are trained to administer Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse the effects of opioids. But county officials are finding that it’s no longer the magic life-from-death potion that it’s assumed to be. When fentanyl is involved, it isn’t having nearly the same success rate. It isn’t bringing people back.
And the victims are often not hardcore drug users. A criminal informant told the Sheriff’s Department that nine out of 10 street drugs are tainted with fentanyl. It can be in everything from counterfeit pills to cocaine to marijuana.
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Kurt Webb never wanted to become an expert on the illicit drug trade. But the more he researched what happened to his son, the more his anger took wings.
“It’s in Adderall. It’s in marijuana,” he said. “And you never know what you’re getting. There’s over 600 different types of pills out there and it’s cut with different chemicals, different potencies. They just shove it in so you have no idea. Might as well hand these kids a gun with a bullet in it, spin it, and here you go, try it. It’s Russian roulette and it’s straight-up criminal. It’s a chemical war going on, basically.”
“The people that are selling, they’re murderers,” Logan said. “I hate saying that. But it’s the truth. They know what they’re doing. They know they’re poisoning people.”
California State Sen. Melissa Melendez, R-Riverside, co-authored a piece of legislation, Senate Bill 350, known as Alexandra’s Law, that would have required convicted drug dealers to receive a written notification that selling certain controlled substances could lead to death — and would have expanded the ability for prosecutors to seek an involuntary manslaughter or murder conviction if a dealer sold to someone who died after taking their product.
The bill failed in committee in January. It received just one of the three required votes out of five. Committee members voiced concerns about packing prisons with drug offenders or giving prosecutors too broad a brush. Could a user be charged with murder for sharing their supply with an acquaintance? Or to use an example from the baseball world, is it justice to put away someone like former Los Angeles Angels PR official Eric Kay for two decades after he supplied the fentanyl-laced painkiller that led to the death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs in a Texas hotel room in 2019? Kay wasn’t a dealer. He wasn’t profiting from drug sales. He was a team employee who hoped to stay in the good graces of a player. Under Texas law, after Kay was found guilty of distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death or serious bodily injury, he is facing a minimum sentence of 20 years.
For now, in the absence of this sort of legislation in California, DAs in places like Placer County have gotten creative. Their prosecutors are charging Schewe with murder even though it means that they must prove implied malice — that he knew the lethality of what he was selling. Portillo said it isn’t so different from charging a convicted drunk driver with manslaughter if a fatality results from a repeat offense.
“It’s extremely difficult to prove what’s inside a dealer’s head,” Portillo said. “But the focus of my office from the top down was to find some way to combat this. So going forward, this is our plan. We have to prove that they knew they were selling fentanyl and they knew how dangerous it was. If we can prove they knew, then it’s an easy step to go to murder. They knew and they still handed the pill over.”
Maybe the first thing that needs to change is the language.
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How can you say that Kade Webb died of an overdose? When he never signed up for a dose of fentanyl in any amount?
Elizabeth Dillender acknowledged that her son had some struggles. He was worried about how he’d provide for a newborn daughter. He battled anxiety. But he wasn’t despondent.
“The entire concept of drug use and drug fatalities needs to be erased,” she said. “Our generation has certain perceptions of a drug user and … it’s not that way. If there’s any message I want to get out to parents, it’s that your child doesn’t have to be an addict to die. You just have to take one pill one time.
“Kade was a typical 20-year-old in a stressful time in his life and thought an anti-anxiety med would ease the nerves of being a new dad and everything coming at him. He was misled. He was lied to.”
Not an overdose, then. A poisoning.
Dillender is preparing herself for more anguish. She said she knows that once the case against Schewe begins, the defense will attempt to paint an unflattering picture of her son. Kurt Webb acknowledged that his son made a terrible mistake by illegally purchasing a controlled substance.
But he said it’s not as simple as blaming the users. An analogy: you can’t drown if you don’t get in the water. But what if you’re swimming in a shallow and sheltered bay? What if you’re having a good time with a reasonable expectation for safety? And what if you’re hit by a tsunami that you never saw coming?
“That’s what fentanyl is,” he said. “It’s a tsunami of evil.”
“That’s what I hope people can learn from this. It was all so fast. We were, like, ‘What the hell just happened?’ A certain group of kids graduated out of the occasional Xanax and then all of a sudden the fentanyl came in and just started wiping everyone out.”
Kurt Webb learned that one of his daughters had a classmate whose sibling also died of fentanyl poisoning. He’s befriended other parents in the Sacramento area who have lost sons and daughters to fentanyl poisoning. He also has become active with promoting Placer County’s ‘One Pill Can Kill’ campaign. Dillender has started a podcast, “Dear Fentanyl: A Goodbye Letter,” to connect with others who have been impacted by the drug, share information and raise awareness.
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Now the Giants are getting involved. Logan and Shana Alexander, a clinical psychologist and the Giants’ Employee Assistance Program director, have begun to sketch out an awareness campaign that will begin with visits to high school assemblies in the Sacramento area. Alexander’s brother, Jesse, is lending his expertise to the program as well. As the fire chief in Yuba City, he has been a first responder to far too many fentanyl-involved tragedies — including a mass casualty incident in Chico in 2019 in which one person died, 12 were hospitalized and as many as six were coding at one time.
A New York Times report on fentanyl victims published last Thursday featured Kade Webb and cited data from the Centers for Disease Control that there were a record number of drug fatalities in the United States last year — almost 108,000 — and that a skyrocketing number of them are stemming from counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that teens and young adults are purchasing over social media. Drug-related deaths have become the leading cause of preventable death among people aged 18 to 45, according to the CDC.
“It’s crazy,” Logan Webb said. “I didn’t realize the numbers were so out of control. Here’s the way I think about it: Life is hard and people deal with things. A lot of people take something, a Xanax. A kid that was struggling maybe needed that little break. I’m not saying it’s OK, but for a kid to take something that kills him … it’s not fair to anybody.
“Whatever I can do to help make people aware, I want to do. We can’t just sit back and be OK with this.”
The world seems so much quieter now. Elizabeth Dillender said Athena still sniffs at the piano bench every day, hoping Kade will enter the room.
Indigo (courtest of Brooklyn Billick)Little Indigo arrived on January 6, barely four weeks after her father died.
Kade and Brooklyn had gone over names again and again. Indigo was the only one they both liked. Kade’s favorite color was blue. They could call her Indi for short.
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“We talked about how we could keep the color scheme going if we had more kids,” Brooklyn said.
She has Kade’s bright blue eyes. It both fills her family with joy to be able to embrace a piece of Kade, and is a daily source of heartbreak to be reminded that she will never know her father.
“Oh, I easily think about it every single day,” Brooklyn said. “Walking around, seeing other couples, can be really hard. When I’m tending to her needs, I’ll wonder what he’d be like with her. He was always super good with his young cousins.”
She kept Kade’s snowboard and his beanies, gloves and goggles in the hope that one day Indi will take an interest in the slopes, be able to wear them and feel connected to her father. The last six months have come at her so fast. She hasn’t begun to figure out what she will tell her daughter when she’s old enough to understand. She’ll probably start by introducing her to all the things they loved to do together: hike to the lake, sit by a fire, carve up a slope.
Elizabeth Dillender has Brooklyn’s location in her phone app. She’ll check it every now and again.
“And she’ll be at the cemetery,” Dillender said. “She takes Indi to Kade’s gravesite four or five times a week.”
Kurt Webb sometimes accompanies them. More often, he’ll go alone. Kade is buried on a gentle slope at Newcastle-Rocklin-Gold Hill Cemetery next to two other boys who died after taking fentanyl.
“I call them the boys on the hill because I talk to all three of them,” Kurt said. “I let them know that hopefully they didn’t die in vain and there’s going to be a change that will come from this.
“I recently started coming out from this shell, this pain I don’t wish upon anybody. I can’t let myself go there for too long because I have to be there for my other kids. You can’t let it take your sanity. The ripple effect of this tragedy is that there’s a little girl who is never going to know this incredible person — this goofy, fun-loving person — that she would call Dad. And there are so many stories just like this.
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“Kade would not want to see this happen to anybody. I’m hoping that sharing Kade’s story can touch one family, one kid, and have its own ripple effect. And we are so grateful that we have Logie on that pedestal and we can do something about it.”
Logan’s first duty was to his family. Two days after he got married and went to his offseason home in Arizona, he returned for Kade’s memorial service. He started a group text with all his aunts, uncles, cousins and all the younger kids in his family: “Text this group if you ever need anything. If someone’s hurting or not feeling right or going through something, you have to talk to us. Because there are a lot of people who want to help you.”
“I’ve had my bouts with a little bit of depression and stuff like that,” Logan said. “I’m lucky to have someone like Shana to talk to and people close to me I can open up to. Maybe Kade didn’t have that. Maybe I could have done something more to help. That’s something I’m still trying to cope with.
“I just miss seeing him smile.”
(Top image: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: courtesy of the Webb family; Dustin Satloff / Getty Images)
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