After 3 Years, Mother Can Finally Sleep After Daughter's Overdose Death

A mother is still mourning the loss of her daughter. Macee Grabber died in 2019 of a heroin overdose. 

Last month, her former boyfriend and drug dealer was charged with first-degree murder for supplying and administering the drugs. 

“This has been the longest yet fastest 3 years of our lives. When you lose a child it's literally like your soul leaves your body and there's just pieces of it that are left," said Macee's mother, Kayla Flanary. 

Flanary said she holds on to the memories of the 24 years she had with her daughter. She says Macee was a vibrant young woman with a beautiful soul.    

“Macee wasn't a troubled kid she never went to jail she was just living an everyday life.” 

Three years later, a week after Macee would have had a 27th birthday, her mother focuses on the happy memories, and what could have been. 

“I can imagine maybe she'd be married, maybe there'd be grandbabies but it's something we'll never know. We just keep getting up every day. It's not that you make it, you just get up and know that it's not for nothing. None of these deaths are for nothing.”  

Flanary said Macee’s addiction began like many others, with pain pills following an injury. 

Macee was in school to become a registered nurse when she fell and slipped a disc in her back. She quickly realized that the pain pills she was prescribed had her hooked. 

Flanary says Macee reached out to her for help and went to rehab. 

“She went to New Legacy in Lubbock and was clean for about 7 months and had been home for about a month when that night happened," said Flanary.  

While Macee was in rehab, she met Dylan Richardson. Flanary said that meeting him was a black spot on her promising life. 

On the night Macee died, Richardson was the one that supplied the heroin, and injected the syringe into Macee's arm. Richardson admitted both of these things to police after Macee's body was found in her Wewoka home. 

“One of the biggest things that keeps me from sleeping at night is knowing this is going to happen to more people if he isn’t taken off the street,” said Flanary. 

State Attorney general john O'Connor filed a first- degree murder charge, distribution of a controlled dangerous substance and use of a communication facility in the commission of a felony. 

“I can tell you that since he has been arrested, I am sleeping just fine. There's no winner in this. But the world is better because he's behind bars and I believe that with all of my heart.”