Jacob Gunnell died when he jumped off an overpass while under the influence of LSD, a death his parents Shelley O'Dwyer and Hyme Gunnell believe was accidental due to vegetation making the central Auckland overpass look like a fence. Photo / Dean Purcell
A popular gym instructor died after taking LSD on a night out and jumping off an overbridge as others tried to bring him to safety. His parents talk to Cherie Howie about how we can do better when it comes to grief.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Jacob Gunnell was 24 and passionate about the group fitness classes he led at three gyms, where he made everyone feel they were part of something, and that no one would be left behind.
Outside work, he had lots of friends and a busy, fun social life.
He loved coffee and Costco, had taken up crypto-mining and given skydiving a go.
And plans, always he had plans.
He wanted to go on his pandemic-delayed OE, and he enjoyed finding new ways to make money, from charging Lime scooters to buying 100 designer shirts to re-sell on TradeMe.
Later, after he’d died, Jacob’s parents would find their eldest son’s work diaries and read all the things he wanted to do to make his group fitness programmes even better.
“He’d had a stint in sales, another in marketing, but the classes were his passion”, dad Hyme Gunnell says.
“This truly was his happy place, you could see it in his energy, his passion, the way he spoke.”
On Christmas Day last year, five days before he jumped to his death from a central Auckland overpass while under the influence of LSD, Jacob made a cheesecake for the family festive gathering, and pored over maps for a holiday to New York planned in a year’s time.
It was a wonderful day, but Jacob’s mum Shelley O’Dwyer knew that wasn’t true for everyone.
In church, her thoughts went to those facing an empty seat at the table, among them the families of five South Canterbury teens killed after the overloaded, speeding vehicle they were passengers in had struck a power pole 16 months earlier.
“I thought about those Timaru boys. Those families that are going through Christmas Day without their loved ones.
“And now it’s gonna be us, you know?”
When Jacob was still living at home, O’Dwyer says, she’d always be happy to hear the sound of his car in the early hours.
“I’d think, ‘Okay, Jacob’s home’. As mothers, you worry. [My younger son] says, ‘Don’t worry about me’. And I say, ‘Well, that’s what mothers do’.”
Fathers too, Gunnell says.
“I thought Jacob had got past the dangerous stage. We were more worried about our younger son.”
Fearing he’d be too tired driving home after seeing in the New Year at Rhythm and Vines, they’d booked and paid for their younger son to stay in a hotel.
As the hours crept towards midnight on the last day of the year, Gunnell was watching sport and O’Dwyer putting away Christmas decorations at their home in the North Shore suburb of Narrow Neck when someone they didn’t know knocked at the door about 1.30pm.
Jacob was at a gathering at his house the night before, the man told them, but hadn’t returned from “a run”, O’Dwyer says.
“He said, ‘Oh, we’ve filed a missing person’s report’.”
Twelve hours of unanswered calls and texts to Jacob’s phone, visits to his work, flat and local park and calls to friends, hospitals and police would follow.
At some point, they found out their son had taken LSD. At another, they googled how long the class A drug stays in a person’s system.
By 5pm, fear was setting in but - perhaps protectively - not of “the worst”, O’Dwyer says.
“You’re thinking he’s injured. I suppose your mind doesn’t want you to think that [he might be dead].”
At 2am, another knock at the door. This time it was two policemen.
“They took off their hats, and they didn’t need to say anything … it’s just like you see in the movies.”
A deceased person they believed could be Jacob had been found, said one.
She couldn’t cry, O’Dwyer says.
“You’re in shock. Part of your brain shuts off … [you know] this isn’t good for you, so you don’t comprehend it.
“It’s your worst nightmare as a parent. You hear about it, and the next minute it’s you.”
But he was still their boy, and they wanted to see him.
“If anybody was going to identify him, it had to be us.”
A policeman drove them to the morgue through city streets now quiet after revellers had welcomed in the new year and gone home.
There was no hiding from reality as “the curtain [was] drawn back slowly”, Gunnell says.
“Him peaceful, sleeping. Us gasping, knees buckling, never the same.”
It was 4am when police dropped them home.
The sun wouldn’t be up for a couple of hours, and it was too early to start the awful task of calling family.
Later that day, Gunnell flew to Gisborne, driving their surviving son back to Auckland. Then, there was a funeral to organise.
It’d be months before they’d learn more about Jacob’s last moments.
Their son, who “brought so much life and energy into a room”, liked to party, and occasionally that included taking “party drugs”, Gunnell says.
“But he would plan those ahead and ensure a safe environment, and where possible get them tested.”
Jacob, they later learned, hadn’t originally planned to take LSD with his friend that night.
“They didn’t have a group of friends to watch out for them, not even a safe person to help ground them. This allowed a chain of events that led to his death.”
When the LSD took hold, Jacob’s mood changed, and in his confusion he began calling a woman with them by a man’s name.
He followed her outside after she went for a cigarette, but when she tried to encourage him back into the house, he ran away, O’Dwyer says.
“Jacob was playing hide and seek with the friend who was trying to bring him to a safe environment, and he jumped a fence.
“And then he jumped another fence, but it was actually an overpass.”
His body was found after footage of the fatal jump was discovered on CCTV.
The coroner’s investigation has yet to be finalised, but they believe Jacob’s death was an accident, O’Dwyer says.
“There’s a flax area in between the motorways. We think he was just trying to get away from [the woman] and he saw the flax, and his perception with the drugs, he just jumped over.”
They never wanted to hide Jacob’s decision to take drugs.
“We want people to know if you do take drugs - which people will, we can’t stop them - you need a good buddy system, where somebody looks after the group, like a sober driver.”
Equally, if someone’s mood changes or they’re in danger after taking drugs, call for help.
“We feel this could’ve been prevented if [the two people with Jacob] just called 111 … just said, ‘Our friend’s taken LSD, he’s run off, we’re concerned about him’.
“You can save a life. You can put that person first.”
LSD is psychedelic that usually comes in squares of colourful blotting paper that are placed under the tongue, but can also come as an odourless white powder, according to The NZ Drug Foundation.
Other names include acid, tabs, blotter, Lucy and dots.
People should use a reagent to make sure their LSD isn’t the more dangerous and bitter-tasting synthetic drug NBOMe, which is sometimes sold as LSD, take lower amounts, wait an hour for the effects to kick in and have a sober person to help in case of a bad trip, according to The Level website.
The Level is run by the foundation to provide a “straight-up” guide for people using alcohol and other drugs.
They acknowledge Jacob chose to take drugs, a decision for which he paid the ultimate price, his parents say.
“Like many of us growing up we took risks and tested boundaries”, says Gunnell.
“We all survived, and others feel they will too, and they do - until they don’t.”
Them. Us.
How fragile the barrier between bereaved and blessed, and how tempting to turn away, as we do with so many difficult things.
“Grief is incredibly lonely,” wrote Lisa Marie Presley, two years after 27-year-old son Benjamin Keough’s death by suicide in July 2020. Presley herself died in January when part of her small intestine became blocked.
“Despite people coming in the heat of the moment to be there for you right after the loss takes place, they soon disappear and go on with their lives and they kind of expect you to do the same, especially after some time has passed.
“This includes “family” as well.”
Grief, she wrote in People magazine, was “most unpopular to talk about”.
“But if we’re going to make any progress on the subject, grief has to get talked about. Death is a part of life whether we like it or not - and so is grieving.”
No amount of longing can change what is done.
A mum and dad from suburban Auckland can no more wrench back the past than could the daughter of a rock ‘n roll superstar.
What O’Dwyer and Gunnell can do is talk about Jacob - who he was, all he achieved and, yes, how he died, so others might learn.
They can also talk about their experience of grief, and how we can support those going through what Presley - who first experienced loss aged 9 upon the death of her famous father, Elvis Presley - had described as “the horrific reality of its unrelenting grips”.
“Great grief, from the death of a child, is exhausting”, O’Dwyer says.
“No one tells you how exhausting. Many of the things we have done relate directly to the emotional and physical reserves we have.”
The heaviest load was borne by parents mourning their child, Presley wrote in her essay, which marked National Grief Awareness Day in the US last August.
“You will become a pariah. You can feel stigmatised and perhaps judged in some way as to why the tragic loss took place.
“I can understand why people may want to avoid you … especially [if you’re] a parent losing their child because it is truly your worst nightmare.”
Before her son’s death, she’d done the same.
“Yet here I am, I am now living what it’s like to be that same representative to other parents … I’m saying this in the hopes that you can reach out to someone who’s grieving.”
Ask how they’re doing, and if it’s okay to talk about their loved one, she wrote.
It keeps their memory alive, and “it keeps us alive as well”.
“And do me a favour, don’t tell them you can’t imagine their pain. Oh yes you can - you just don’t want to.”
For the first two months, the agony of Jacob’s loss was so acute even organising meals was too much.
But neither could they cope with seeing people, O’Dwyer says.
“Our friends, seeing that, organised a dinner roster providing us with meals delivered with a knock at the door, no contact needed. We are forever grateful for that.”
When they felt able to again cook for themselves, they shopped in a different suburb to avoid bumping into anyone they knew before they were ready.
“Slowly we’ve ventured into the community. People have been great at giving us space, saying hello with a nod or a gentle touch, letting us start a conversation, or not.”
They know it’s hard for people to know what to do when someone’s suffered a loss, the motivation for talking about their experience, Gunnell says.
Whether, beyond the formal farewells, to say something - or not - when, and how often.
Some acquaintances had never acknowledged Jacob’s death, others - thinking they were doing the right thing - no longer spoke his name in the couple’s company, something they found incredibly painful.
“[It will] help ourselves and hopefully help others. Grief is hard always, and we don’t always do it well, especially when it’s so unexpected, and to one so young.”
Many people no longer know how to respond to bereavement, grief counsellor Dr John McEwan says.
Longer, healthier lives meant fewer experience grief early in life, and mourning rituals have weakened.
“The last generation that did it well was the World War II generation. The myth is that people didn’t talk about their feelings. But they had rituals that helped them work through - everybody knew to dress up in their best clothes and be there with the people experiencing loss.
“You might just shake their hands or give them a hug. But you were there and there was a sometimes unspoken support, which today people are more awkward with.”
Even those from cultures better at dealing with death sometimes lose their way.
A kaumatua once lamented he wasn’t “coping better”, because it’d been three months since his son died, McEwan says.
“I said, ‘Who told you you’d bounce back from the death of a child in three months?’. He did a double take and said, ‘I suppose I just sort of expected I would’.
“For most of us, with our instant-coffee culture, we haven’t factored in that to deal with great grief, we need a great deal of time. We’re just not made to shrug it off and move on.”
And then those on the outside fear “opening the wound” if they speak about the loss, McEwan says.
“Because some people do lose the plot, there’s a fear. So we practise denial. But that’s not helpful. We’re not opening the wound, we’re just reminding ourselves this person is loved and still part of our lives.
“And we’ve got to give people permission to have a good blubber and not have to apologise. It’s normal. Don’t be afraid of just putting your arm around someone and saying, ‘There are no words, I’m just here’.”
Of course, none of this is easy.
Dr Lucy Hone has seen both sides, losing her 12-year-old daughter Abi in 2014 car crash, and learning about others’ experience of bereavement through her work in resilience psychology, including her recently revised book, Resilient Grieving, and working with the bereaved through the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing and Resilience.
Everyone’s different, and loss doesn’t change that, she says.
“I asked [our Coping with Loss community] recently what they want people to say, what’s helpful and what are the worst things. And that demonstrated there’s no one right thing to say.”
In 2014, Australian couple Rin and Maz Maslin lost their three children when flight MH17 was shot down.
When their youngest child, born after the tragedy, started at her Perth school the couple asked the principal to write in the school newsletter that it was okay to talk about their older kids.
“They hope that none of you are reluctant to freely speak to them about all of their children.”
Identifying and then having the courage to say what they need is one of the biggest challenges for the bereaved, Hone says.
“When we’re grieving our brain can be mush and we feel overwhelmed. My greatest advice to our clients is, don’t expect people to be mind readers.
“The supporters need to ask, and the bereaved need to front up and tell.”
O’Dwyer says that with so much to organise, and so many wanting to visit, they initially managed this by asking two people to act as gatekeepers, and help co-ordinate support, in the days after Jacob’s death,.
Too much contact is exhausting, too little discouraging, so if in doubt, start small, she says.
“It’s nice receiving caring messages from friends, it’s nice even getting a red heart emoji and not a big, long text. Just a heart means a lot.”
Those expressions of sympathy are as special as the cards and letters that will also be “cherished forever”.
“It’s better to reach out than not. Otherwise, how would you feel seeing [the bereaved person] later?”
They were again meeting with friends, and able to be polite but upfront when a visit is too draining.
“We’ve created an outdoor seating area with a fire pit that we call Jacob’s Place. We’ve had a group of his school friends around the fire pit and loved the time and stories they gave us.”
No one wants to suffer loss, but talking about what they’ve learned has been positive.
This ranges from getting sleeping pills, drinking lots of water and taking vitamin C in the immediate aftermath of Jacob’s death - to avoid illness in an already challenging time - to exercising, taking time in nature and enjoying fun activities, like going to the movies, in the longer term.
Projects, like Jacob’s Place, help too.
As has taking up a friend’s suggestion to leave space for their eldest son when taking family photos, O’Dwyer says.
Jacob is spoken of “freely and often”, but there’s also an acknowledgement that life carries on.
It’s what Jacob would want, she says.
“It’s important to celebrate normal family events, such as birthdays, with the focus on that celebration.
“We start with a toast to Jacob, and then we go on.”
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.
The 36-year-old died on December 19.