LAS VEGAS (KSNV & MyNews 3) -- Jay Sirat shouldn't be dead but his addiction to bath salts destroyed his life.
News 3's Reed Cowan is investigating this new drug trend and spoke with Jay's father, Rob Sirat -- a man determined to save other lives by telling his son's story.
There's no pain worse than losing a child. Nothing. The father you are about to meet would rather do anything but speak about such painful things.
News three has shown some of the bath salts Robb Sirat found in his son's bedroom after his son's death. He wants you to see this story and hopes it will save lives.
Jay was a college-bound young man from a religious family and should have lived -- should have been anywhere -- but in a Boulder City grave.
Synthetic drugs known as bath salts killed him, says his father.
“I felt that when my son was on bath salts...he was possessed,” he said holding back tears.
Robb Sirat says one of Jay's classmates, who was another athlete, introduced him to bath salts which are a cocaine copycat attractive to the teen because teens say bath salts don't show up in drug tests.
Sirat sensing something was wrong with Jay took him for a drug test.
“I knew at the time he was high...if he's high...how did he pass a drug test?” Rob Sirat said.
He passed because as those who sell bath salts told our undercover team: "They always come out with new ones and the ones they ban, there's not much time to catch up it costs too much money to make all these special tests for each different kind there's a thousand and they can tweak and make it a different compound."
Within months Jay Sirat became a person his family didn't recognize and.one night lost his mind.
“Jay just jumped out of the car at 40 miles per hour,” his dad said. “Runs across the street...clears five feet tall. ... We found him three hours later asleep in a dumpster.”
The next day Sirat was committed to a hospital and that was followed by rehab. But it wouldn't save the would-be champion swimmer.
After coming home committed to staying clean his sister found him in a noose in the family garage and his father received the news by phone.
“ Words I never thought in a million years...Jay's dead,” Rob Sirat says. “I remember the next think I knew I was on the ground in the arms of my friends.”
No words--just tears after retelling the worst of outcomes. The family was left to wonder what could have been had bath salts not been legal and available to their son.
Robb Sirat believes action is a way to heal.
It hasn't been that long since his son's death and already he's been to smoke shops that sell bath salts to confront those who sell it.
Tomorrow at 5, we explore a father's war on bath salts and what our undercover cameras caught.
