<script type=text/javascript>var collab_title = 'What happened to Amber Suri';</script><!-- /HEADLINE --><!-- MAIN PHOTO -->
Published: Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 5:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 1:30 a.m.
Amber Suri was larger than life, a firecracker, a champion, a math whiz, a comedian, a heartbreaker, a commander.
Her death was a mockery of her life.
"We want to let everyone know," Deborah said. "We don't want this to happen to anyone else."
'It's a tragedy'
Lexington Police Chief John Lollis walked into Capt. Tad Kepley's office, passed him a thick folder and sat down. Kepley flipped through reports, interviews and drawings.
"The deceased is a 17-year-old female," Kepley began. "Subject was found Feb. 7 at 12:04 a.m. behind an apartment in Fairview Village.
"The female had a trash bag. She walked to an air conditioning unit in the rear of the apartment complex and collected refrigerant from the unit into the bag. She used some sort of prying tool on the back to get it open.
"It appears she put the bag over her mouth and inhaled," Kepley said. "Because of this, it caused her to die."
On Feb. 6, Amber went to a friend's apartment after work at 6 p.m. Kepley said she left before midnight, saying she was going to Taco Bell and would be back. Time passed, and she didn't return. Her friends looked for her. They called her other friends.
"She was found behind one of the apartment complexes and brought around front," Kepley said.
She'd fallen forward with hands first, Kepley said. The wind tangled the bag around her face, and police wondered if Freon inhalation or asphyxiation killed her. EMS and police came, but she was gone.
Speaking for the first time, Lollis said, "We've had deaths of all kinds, but this is the first one that's similar to this."
He said he's heard other towns' teenagers huffed chemicals from cans of compressed air and paint. Lexington shares other towns' blights of marijuana use and underage drinking, but inhalant use was a new animal.
"My guess is that it's not a regular thing, but there's a group that does this that she learned it from," Lollis said. "From our standpoint, it's a tragedy if it takes one life, especially so young."
Its rarity is linked to its danger. Kepley said youngsters are taught about the dangers of alcohol and hard drugs. Not many hear about haloalkane or nitrous oxides, so they inhale them and get high, ignorant of what it's doing to their bodies.
Kepley leaned back in his chair.
"That girl had no idea she was going to die. No idea."
'I thought she was smarter than this'
"You'll find we're pretty open about this," Kevin said.
"I think it's very important to tell people this can kill you," Deborah said.
"They need to know, because not many people know how dangerous it is," he said.
"Until it kills someone," she said.
They sat next to each other on an orange couch Tuesday watching Amber's tabby kitten stalk around the living room.
The Talleys live in a quiet part of the county, a few miles from Central Davidson High School. Amber was a junior there. She took all honors classes. She was the only girl on the wrestling team, took shop and was JROTC commander last semester.
Her freshman year was at West Forsyth. Her old classmates made a photo collage for Kevin and Deborah for Amber's wake. They brought it home and put it on the fish tank in the living room. Amber's smile beams from each frame. Amber in fatigues. Amber at prom. Amber in sweats with sunglasses stuck in her hair. Same brilliant gaze.
"She was so determined. If you said there was something she couldn't do, she'd do it just so she could show you," Kevin said.
"But she'd work at it until she got it and then start looking for a new challenge," Deborah said. "She worked hard until she was the best at something, and then she got bored."
"She made it to the top and didn't want to go any further," Kevin said.
"She had incredible drive," Deborah said. "She wanted something more out of life than she was given. She was very smart. But I thought she was smarter than this."
'Personable and confident'
"See, this wasn't in keeping with her personality at all. Everybody's shocked, even the people who knew her best," said Central JROTC instructor Sgt. Hugo Solustri.
Solustri favored making Amber battalion commander last fall.
"When we choose a commander, the instructors look for someone who can lead the rest. Someone who made others want to do what she wanted them to do. Someone personable and confident," Solustri said. "And Amber had all those things."
She had a quiet presence. Not boisterous, but stirring. When she entered a room silently, the excitement jumped a couple notches. But, he said, she could be a pit bull, especially over the extracurricular plans to benefit the cadets.
Before transferring to Central, Solustri said she called about the JROTC program. Did it have a rifle team? What about a drill team?
"I've never had a student do that," he said. "She was almost interviewing us."
'Just her usual self'
"I have no idea why people do it," Lollis said. "If you think about it, kids can get high on all kinds of stuff around the house. They get some kind of rush from it."
He said people inhale anything from propellants in aerosol cans to fumes from gasoline. Some concentrate it in a plastic or paper bag, and others huff from canisters. It's cheap, easy to find, legal to carry and never shows up in drug tests.
Users say it makes them feel euphoric. When the effect fades, they breathe more. They're not breathing oxygen, needed by every cell in the body. If the toxins don't kill them, they die of hypoxia.
"There's a reason it's illegal," Lollis said. "It's because it's dangerous. When people experiment and breathe chemicals, it causes brain damage and damages the heart. And, as we know now, it can kill."
Most parents have no suspicions their children use it.
"We did. We suspected something, but we couldn't pinpoint it," Kevin said.
"We noticed it one day after she'd gotten off work. Her eyes were glassy," Deborah said.
"And there was a smell. It was a sweet," he said. "They say when it comes out of the pores, it has a sweet, pungent smell."
"We'd been looking for all the other signs of drug use, but nothing fit," she said.
"She was acting normal. No personality changes," he said.
"Just her usual self," she said.
That was three days before she died.
'I had to do this for her, too.'
"It was that infamous knock at the door at 2 in the morning," Kevin said. "Two Lexington police and a sheriff's deputy. And when they say, 'Can we come in ...?'"
"You already know," Deborah said.
There was business to take care of, papers to sign. Generous to the last, Amber was a major organ donor. Deborah said it was hard to deal with sorting out donor information not two hours after her daughter died.
"I opened and closed her body bag. I was the one who identified her. I looked at the pictures of her after she died," Deborah said. "I had to do it. I carried her inside of me for nine months. I took care of her for almost 18 years. I had to do this for her, too."
Police gave her parents Amber's phone.
"It was her lifeline. She was never without it," Deborah said. "We went through it and texted all the people she had saved in there."
"There were about 90 or more," Kevin said.
"And people called and texted for hours after that, asking about her," Deborah said.
Plenty of potential
"This was some experimental new thing," Solustri said. "It hadn't gone on long at all, I don't think. I know she didn't mess with that stuff while she was in JROTC, and I'd bet everything on that."
It's been over a week since Amber died, but Solustri said the cadets talk about her every day. She wasn't the teen who came to school and left at 3:15 every day, Solustri said, but was everywhere in the school. Planning, cheering, tutoring, being Amber.
"The contributions this girl made for just being 17, there's no telling what she could have gone on to do," Solustri said.
'Check that everything's normal'
Deborah and Kevin wanted Amber's funeral to be special.
"We didn't dress her up. She was buried in jeans and a sweatshirt. It was clothes she'd packed to go visit friends," Deborah said. "She had hot pink fingernails the funeral home painted for her. And she had her sunglasses holding her hair back."
They put her cell phone close by in her coffin. They left it on so Amber's friends could leave last thoughts with her.
The Talleys talked to their daughter about drugs and alcohol and unprotected sex but never dreamed this ending. Now, they're left with questions and disappointments and a lesson.
"If a parent suspects their child is doing anything, check up on them," Deborah said. "Go out back and check the air conditioner. Make sure there's nothing pried off and no screwdrivers laying on the ground. Check that everything's normal."
Heather J. Smith can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 228 or at heatherj.smith@the-dispatch.com.
Source: http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20090219/ARTICLES/902190317?Title=What-happened-to-Amber-Suri
