The mother of one of the University of Idaho mass murder victims is now in jail on drug charges as she couldn't manage to stay sober following her daughter's killing.
Cara Northington, the mother of Xana Kernodle, has been arrested on drug charges.
The 43-year-old has been struggling with drug abuse throughout her adult life and was jailed on drug charges on February 24.
She is being held at the Kootenai County Jail in Coeur d'Alene, 66 miles from where Xana and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, and two housemates, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, were murdered on November 13, 2022.
Brian Kohberger, a PhD student in criminology at nearby Washington State University in Pullman, was arrested on December 30 and is facing a trial this year on murder charges.
Northington said that she was clean before the attack, working as a waitress and striving to make fresh inroads with her children. But her daughter's murder triggered her relapse, she said.
Her time behind bars has now forced her to go through a painstaking withdrawal, with staff providing her with nothing more than ibuprofen and Gatorade to soldier through.
Northington is confined to a cell with three other inmates on bunk beds at the facility, where she only has daytime access to a TV often airing news about the savage killings – all while she undergoes drug withdrawals.
She said she is in a "living nightmare", as she stays awake at night replaying the massacre in her mind and wrestling with personal demons. The ordeal has left Northington to face her dark, new reality sober.
The one thing that keeps her going is not wanting to disappoint Xana and her two surviving children, daughter Jazzmin, 22, and teenage son Elijah.
"They are my strength," she said. "It's one thing to lose a child, but when you still have two really great children, you have to pull it together for them, you know?"
In November, the police in Kootenai County charged Northington with two counts of felony drug possession, four days after her daughter's killing.
Out of mercy, authorities released her so she could attend a memorial for her daughter.
But Northington did not go to her next court date because she was still getting high.
A warrant was issued for her arrest, and she went off the grid in Spokane but still could not escape the news.
The University of Idaho massacre had become the subject of nonstop media coverage.
The revelation was particularly startling for Northington, whose older daughter Jazzmin is a senior studying marketing there.
In January, the mother appeared on NewsNation, where she publicly blasted the fact that Jazzmin was allowed to continue her studies at WSU alongside Kohberger even after he was identified as a suspect but before his arrest.
She also reacted to reports that Ann Taylor, the lawyer defending her on drug charges, had dropped her to represent her daughter's accused killer.
