It’s news no parent wants to break to a child.
Brenden Clark had to tell his 8-year-old son Cameron his mother had died from a drug overdose the night before.
He recorded the moment, and posted it to his Facebook page — as a cautionary tale, he says. A week later, the video has over 34 million views.
Sitting at a picnic table in northeastern Ohio, Clark told the boy there’s something he needed to hear.
“Mommy died last night.”
Cameron appeared shocked, prompting his father to repeat it several times.
“What do you mean? My mom? How?” the boy asked.
“From drugs,” Clark replied.
The boy broke down in tears, falling into his grandmother’s arms.
An epidemic
“This [is] for any and every addict with children,” the father wrote on Facebook.
Clark said he took the video without his child’s permission — but got his approval to post it online.
“This wasn’t staged. This was real. I had someone record this so addicts with children can see the seriousness of our epidemic,” he said.
“Don’t let this disease have to make someone tell your child that you’re dead because of drugs.”
The video is yet another startling reminder of the toll drugs are taking on Ohio.
As HLN’s Ashleigh Banfield pointed out on CNN’s “New Day,” the state recorded 3,050 deaths due to drug overdoses last year.
The results of toxicology tests to determine the official cause of the mother’s death are pending, the Trumbull County coroner’s office said.