LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Cheyene Helm says her daughter, 4-year-old Brighton Hendron, meant everything to her.
She said, "She's my best friend she is a light to so many people, she's changed a lot of people's lives."
It's been almost a year since she passed away. Her mom had an idea about what caused her baby's death. Brighton was born with Turner Syndrome. It's rare and can cause developmental and medical issues. But this mom was shocked when she found out three weeks later that it was fentanyl poisoning.
Helm said, "[I] had no idea what fentanyl was, until I was told that. I started doing my research and realized that it was an opioid that killed my daughter -- innocent, pure, child."
We've reported on this case in the past. Prosecutors say that Brighton was at a family members home when she was exposed to fentanyl. Multiple people were charged and two are set to go to trial next august. Now, a billboard sits on east New Circle Road in Lexington, warning anyone who passes it about the drug's danger. Helm also started the Bright Light Foundation to make a difference.
Fentanyl poisoning can happen to anyone that’s what Helm and her organization wants people to think about when they see this billboard of her daughter, baby Brighton. She says she doesn’t want what happened to her and her family to happen to anyone else.
Helm said, "I want them to think, if they’re having a bad day, to think about me and what I've lost and maybe their day isn’t so bad, or maybe their life isn’t as bad as they think. But also, to see that my baby girl's life was taken far too soon, far too young, far too sudden."
Getting this billboard up in her daughter's memory was important to Helm who wants people to know who Brighton was.
She shares, "My baby girl Brighton, she's loved, and she's missed, and I just want everyone to know her. I don’t want her to be forgotten."
