Donna and Greg Lannes with a picture of their daughter Alicia, who died of a heroin overdose last year.
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
Alicia Lannes's death on March 5, 2008, shed light on a highly organized heroin ring operating among more than 50 teens and young adults in Centreville.
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
A 2006 photo of Alicia Lannes and boyfriend Skylar Schnippel, who supplied the drugs that killed her; he was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
"He seemed fine, at first," Donna Lannes says of Skylar, with Alicia in 2007. In July of that year, police had spotted him buying heroin; by then, he'd been purchasing the drug for himself and Alicia for months.
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
Donna and Greg Lannes at their home in Centreville, where parents were plagued by the question: Why would children of supportive parents get involved with heroin?
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
Alicia Lannes's parents have preserved this Bible verse she wrote in chalk on a cabinet door for a sick relative who was staying with the family.
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
Donna and Greg Lannes visit Alicia's grave at Stonewall Memory Gardens in Manassas. "There was no limit to what she thought she could do," Greg says.
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
Alicia's death was one of four attributed to the Centreville heroin ring. Many ring members were current or former students at Westfield High School. Sixteen young people were convicted on criminal charges, with sentences ranging from 30 days to 26 years in prison.
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
Greg and Donna Lannes often bring fresh flowers to Alicia's grave and spend time there.
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
Donna and Greg Lannes trace signs of Alicia's troubles to her early teens, when she began experiencing episodes of powerful anxiety that they didn't understand at the time. After a suicide attempt in 2006, Alicia told her father she wanted to be with her best friend, who'd killed herself a year earlier: "She's the only one who knows my secret."
Ricky Carioti-The Washington Post
Greg Richter, who lives with his family near the Lanneses, watched his daughter Anna -- a classmate of Alicia and Skylar's -- descend into the harrowing world of heroin, too.
Michael Williamson-The Washington Post
Greg Richter at home in Centreville. Like Alicia, Anna had a high school boyfriend -- another of the ring's early members -- whom her parents weren't crazy about.
Michael Williamson-The Washington Post
Greg Richter shows photos of Anna in 2007, left, when she was using heroin, and in August during her recovery.
Michael Williamson-The Washington Post
"We saw her drifting away, retreating into herself," Lucy Richter says of daughter Anna, pictured in October. Anna's struggles with depression and substance abuse were intensified by a series of losses: One friend died of an overdose, another in a car crash, and two were murdered in the 2007 rampage at Virginia Tech.
Joshua Prezant
Gallery Credits:
Photo Editor, Producer Troy Witcher
Text Editors Doug Norwood, Jonathan Padget
