Family Speaks Out on Death of 20-Year-Old John ‘Sonny’ Venters in Santa Barbara

Behind every fentanyl death is a family in grief. After young John Venters died last week near Stearns Wharf, one of his cousins contacted the Independent to express how sad it made his family to see the grim photo. “We would love if we could shed light on the person behind the body bag and the crisis at hand,” his cousin, Payge Bellini, said.

“Sonny,” as he was known to his loved ones, had turned 20 about a month before. He had been struggling with drug use and was released from a sober living facility in town just three days before his death. He’d been found unresponsive in a bathroom near the Dolphin Fountain and was given first aid, as well as Narcan, a drug used to counteract an opioid overdose. However, Venters was unable to be resuscitated and was pronounced dead at the scene. 

Bellini said Venters was “just a good kid” who was “always loving and worrying about everyone else.” He moved from Arizona out to Santa Barbara County to stay with his extended family in recent years, and was an active teenager who loved to skateboard and was “a force to be reckoned with.” He’d had to grow up too fast in recent years, she said, after dealing with a history of drug use and a rough home life.

“Johnny wasn’t a man,” said Venters’s older cousin. “He was a kid who tried to numb his pain with fentanyl.”

Venters’s grandparents and older brother had taken turns raising him, and according to his family, he had been living in the New House Sober Living facility just a few days before his death.

Bellini helped create a GoFundMe page to raise money for Venters’s extended family to be able to attend the memorial service in Santa Ynez.

Credit: Courtesy

“There are many immediate family members with zero means to travel and I cannot imagine the grief and pain they are feeling, let alone the haunting feeling that they can’t get to the memorial,” the page reads.

In a recent update posted on GoFundMe, Bellini wrote: “I am blown away by the amount of support our family has received so quickly during this horrific loss. I can’t even begin to express our gratitude. Nothing can make this okay but love does keep us going and remember to skate on for Johnny. To our friends, family, communities in Big Sur and Santa Barbara and beyond, thank you. Truly, deeply, thank you. To everyone who loved Sonny and everyone who felt called to kindness, we appreciate you. We will pay this forward always. Remember to check in on your loved ones and let them know you love them.”

To donate to the family’s expenses, visit the GoFundMe page here.