After fatal overdose at LA juvenile hall, a mother grieves as drugs remain a threat
LOS ANGELES — Marlen Medina knew exactly what she would give her son when he returned from Sylmar’s Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall: a blue Dodge Charger.
She was paying it off while her son, Bryan Diaz, served time for attempted murder. She expected him to be released sometime next year — a date he was eagerly awaiting.
“Pronto voy llegar a la casa, “ he wrote in one of the many letters he sent his mother from juvenile hall.
Soon, I’m coming home.
On May 9, Diaz died inside his cell from an overdose caused by fentanyl-laced narcotics — the first death inside the county’s juvenile halls in over a decade.
Five months after her son’s death, Medina, 46, drove up to a Hermosa Beach cafe in the same Blue Dodge she had planned to give him. It looked the way she imagined it would when Diaz took the wheel, except for one grim modification to the back windshield.
“F—-Sylmar Juvenile Hall,” reads the decal stretching across the entire back of the car. “R.I.P. Bryan Diaz (04-25-2005 ~ 05-09-2023).“
“It hurts me so much,” she said in Spanish, her voice cracking, “that I wasn’t able to take him to the DMV to get his driver’s license, that I wasn’t able to show him how to drive, that he didn’t
