Vape Clerk Near Ole Miss Warned People Were Dying but Its Owner Was Already a Fugitive

Aidan Hamilton was 18 years old when he was found dead in his Ole Miss dorm room.

Court papers say he made purchases at an Oxford vape shop the day before he died.

Now records dug up by Fox News show the man who owns that shop was already on the run.

What Investigators Found Inside Puffs Vape

Hamilton, a freshman from Colorado, was found in Stewart Hall on September 21.

The same day, Robert Strang, a 20-year-old junior from Atlanta, was found dead at his off-campus home on Van Buren Avenue.

Next to both young men were packets of "SMAX Pseudo-DHM" tablets, which investigators believe are a synthetic form of kratom.

Strang had last been seen around midnight, and by the time he was found the next afternoon he was "cold to the touch," with kratom tablets on his nightstand.

His packet came from a gas station in neighboring Yalobusha County, according to court documents.

Hamilton had shopped at Puffs Vape, Tobacco and Beer Store in Oxford.

When police raided Puffs, they carried out more than 500 units of kratom along with THC products and suspected narcotics.

Lafayette County has banned kratom since 2019, so none of that kratom should have been on the shelf.

Two store workers, Yahya Mohamed Mosleh, 51, and Islam Mohamed, 18, were arrested on controlled substance distribution charges.

Then came the line from the affidavit that should make every parent in Mississippi sick.

A clerk told a confidential informant to "be careful taking them because people were dying from them."

The clerk knew.

The sale happened anyway.

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell has been careful about the link to the deaths: "I don't think there's a direct relation to this particular case."

Toxicology results are still pending, and Gov. Tate Reeves pushed to speed up testing that normally takes weeks.

Whatever the lab finds, a shop near campus was selling a banned product while a clerk behind the counter warned buyers about deaths.

The Owner Walked Away From a Trafficking Case

The store belongs to Amer Alowdi, 40.

Fox News Digital found that Alowdi had been indicted in 2022 for trafficking "hundreds of doses of an illegal synthetic cannabinoid."

That case began in March 2020 with controlled buys at a Texaco convenience store, after which narcotics agents followed Alowdi from his store to a warehouse in Tupelo.

A traffic stop turned up vape products, cartridges and boxes of Viagra.

A conviction could bring 40 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

In 2024, a judge refused to throw out the charges.

Alowdi left the country before the case ever reached trial.

All three men charged – Alowdi, Mosleh and Mohamed – were born in Yemen and are naturalized American citizens, according to Fox News.

The reporting so far doesn't say where he went, how he got out, or what conditions he was under while the case was pending.

Mississippi prosecutors owe the public those answers.

A man under felony trafficking indictment walked out of the country, and his shop kept doing business near a campus full of teenagers until police raided it.

Washington Sounded the Alarm on Kratom Pills Long Before Oxford

Federal health officials saw this coming.

In July 2025, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary warned that 7-OH, a concentrated kratom compound turning up at vape shops, gas stations and smoke shops across the country, "is an opioid that can be more potent than morphine."

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the industry's youth-friendly packaging "sinister."

The FDA recommended scheduling the compound under the Controlled Substances Act.

Tindell now says Mississippi lawmakers may consider "a statewide ban on kratom."

That can't come fast enough.

If toxicology finds fentanyl, Mississippi's Parker's Law – passed in 2022 – lets prosecutors charge whoever delivered the drug in a death.

A county ban clearly wasn't enough to keep this stuff off the counter.

Two families in Colorado and Georgia sent their boys to Oxford for college.

Neither one is coming home, and the man who owns the shop where one of them made purchases is somewhere overseas.

Sources:

• Adam Sabes, Preston Mizell and Kelsie Cairns, "Yemen-born vape shop owner near Ole Miss fled country after synthetic drug trafficking indictment: docs," Fox News, September 28, 2026.
• Adam Sabes, "Vape store clerk near Ole Miss campus warned buyer 'people were dying' from kratom pills, affidavit says," Fox News, September 29, 2026.
• Adam Sabes, Michael Ruiz and Madison Scarpino, "Ole Miss toxicology reports expected soon and results may trigger anti-fentanyl law, official says," Fox News, September 25, 2026.
• "Court documents detail hours before Ole Miss students' suspected overdose deaths," Action News 5, September 29, 2026.
• Angelica Stabile, "Deadly substance under scrutiny as kratom byproduct shows up in gas stations, smoke shops," Fox News, July 29, 2025.