Father of Park City teen who died of overdose in 2016 responds to arrest of UNLV student who sold his son opioids

PARK CITY, Utah — Shortly after the news of Colin Shapard’s arrest surfaced, Robert Ainsworth, the father of 13-year-old Ryan Ainsworth who overdosed on “pinky” distributed by Shapard, reached out to both KUTV2 and FOX13 in Salt Lake City.

Shapard, 21, of Las Vegas, was recently charged with six counts of distribution of a controlled substance.

According to reports, Shapard was using cryptocurrency via a messaging app and was shipping packages of the substance through the U.S. Postal Service until Postal Inspectors intercepted the packages in Park City.

Officials from the US Drug Enforcement Administration noted that some of the pills were linked to a non-fatal overdose that occurred on February 10, 2022.

“I discovered my son dead at my home from a substance U47700, which Park City school and police had known had been circulating among students for many days prior to the death of my son,” Ainsworth told KUTV2.

“I don’t know that anger even begins to cover the level of horror and astonishment of a repeated pattern where children are known to be at risk of death,” Ainsworth continued.

Despite no longer living in Park City, Ainsworth told FOX13 that substance abuse was one of the town’s “worst kept secrets” and hopes that Shapard’s arrest shines light on the problem.

“My message is that this needs to be talked about to prevent it from happening in the future,” Ainsworth told FOX13. “Being a former aircraft designer and flight tester and now working for a major airline, it’s our duty, if there is something wrong, to report this information so that it doesn’t happen again.”

As for Shapard, he currently remains in jail and should remain incarcerated until a hearing on March 24. He’s currently facing six felony counts of distributing fentanyl and if convicted could spend at least 20 years in federal prison.