Many Questions Remain for Jacobsen Family

If there were two lessons Francesca Jacobsen said she hopes other teenagers will take away from the death of her 17-year-old daughter it would be not to take drugs, and not to count on friends to take care of them.

"They can't trust so-called friends," she said. "As far as drugs go, I hope my daughter's death scares the living daylights out of them."

The only vexing part about the message, Jacobsen said, was that the importance of family over friends and the ability to not bow to peer pressure were values her daughter held.

"She was her own person, she was strong-minded," Jacobsen said of her daughter. "I just don't understand how this could have happened."

Danielle Jacobsen, a senior at Newtown High School and high honors student, was found dead 0n May 30 in a pond at the Northbrook Condominium complex in Monroe. Police said prior to her death, she and other teenagers had gathered in a condominium unit nearby where some of them took the hallucinogenic drug, DMT.

The toxicology results on Jacobsen are still pending, a representative of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Farmington said on Friday. Police said remnants of the drug found on a dining room table in the condominium tested positive for DMT.

A 22-year-old former Newtown resident, Quentin Ham, is being held on two counts of distributing illegal drugs, a felony, as well as charges of carrying a pistol without a permit, second-degree reckless endangerment and second-degree breach of peace in connection with an alleged suicide attempt shortly after learning that Jacobsen's body had been found, Newtown police said.

DMT is not a widely known and used drug in the area, and according to the arrest warrant issued for Ham, it was the first time many of the teens who had gathered in the condominium had ever taken the drug.

While Jacobsen may have experimented with drugs shortly after her father died unexpectedly in 2008, she and her family had been able to work through their grief, and with the support of dozens of extended family members and friends nearby and in Westchester, had turned the corner on that tragic chapter in their lives, Francesca Jacobsen said.

Her daughter had taken the death of her father hard, and in an effort for her to receive more personalized attention from teachers in a smaller class setting, she was enrolled in The Afternoon Program at Newtown High School, her family said.

During the last year and a half in that program, Danielle Jacobsen appeared to have flourished, getting grades that not only placed her on the honors list but also high honors.

"You don't get those kind of grades when you're on drugs," said Francesca Jacobsen, a stay-at-home mother who kept close tabs on her daughter, including writing down the license plate numbers of any of her daughter's friends who came to visit.

In one of her daughter's latest report cards, still tacked onto the refrigerator of the Jacobsens' Hawleyville home, the teacher wrote, "Participation good/excellent; Positive influence."

During the past few weeks, Francesca Jacobsen has replayed in her mind the last year and a half of her daughter's life and quizzed teachers for any clue of drug use, and has found none, she said.

"It's not like her," Jacobsen said.

Those questions are in addition to many others she and her family have about what happened inside the Monroe condominium prior to Danielle Jacobsen's death.

Three days before being found dead, Jacbosen had returned home at about 11 p.m. Thursday, and like she has done nearly ever night, gone into her grandparent's home, which adjoins the main house, to bid good night to her grandmother, Grace Eturaspe. Nothing seemed amiss, and Jacobsen appeared to be her normal bubbly self, Eturaspe said.

The next night, Jacobsen talked to her mother about weekend plans, asking if any extended family members were scheduled to come over so that she could be around, otherwise she would make plans to hang out with friends.

When her mother told her they had nothing planned, Danielle Jacobsen said she and friends would head to Lake Compounce theme park in Bristol on Saturday. The next morning, she was gone but her family didn't think anything of it because they had assumed she had woken up early to make the trip to Bristol, they said.

When she didn't answer her cell phone during the day, they remained calm, reasoning that she must be having fun at a water ride and probably left her cell phone in a locker or somewhere dry. When the wait stretched into a full day, panic set in and Eturaspe called police.

It was only later that they were told Danielle Jacobsen and a friend she had only met a couple of weeks earlier had headed over to the Monroe condominium in the early morning hours of Saturday, shortly after speaking with her mother.

Jacobsen, who had only met Ham that morning, as well as two others apparently snorted DMT and went to lay on the living room floor, according to Ham's arrest warrant, which cited a statement one of the youths who was in the unit made to police.

Jacobsen and the others appeared to have been hallucinating when she then got up and wanted to know where her cell phone and purse were, according to the statement. She then questioned how long the drug's effect would last, appearing agitated but eventually returning to the floor, according to the statement.

She finally got up again and left the condo, never to return, according to the statement. The group had believed she had gone to vomit outside, according to the statement.

That account has raised suspicions with her family, particularly the part about her going outside to vomit, Francesca Jacobsen said.

"It sounds like a guy's story," she said.

Additionally, the part about trying to find her cell phone was bothersome because Danielle Jacobsen always had her cell phone on her, Francesca Jacobsen said, adding the phone was later found in a car of one of the youths, which again raises suspicions.

"These are questions that drive me crazy all day," she said. "I wish I had been a fly on the wall."

With so many unanswered questions, Jacobsen and Eturaspe said they won't rest until they get answers and justice for Danielle, though they are not sure whether that will be possible without her.

"I don't think we'll ever find out because she can't speak for herself," Eturaspe said.