EXCLUSIVE: Mother pushes for answers after son found dead in Fresno

CLOVIS, Calif. (KFSN) -- On a summer Sunday morning, Kelly Irwin chatted with her son Spencer like most days.

"We were all still really close. He and I talked every single day. We had lunch in between his classes at City College," Kelly said.

That day, he had called from an acquaintence's phone to tell her he was walking from his apartment on McKinley to the intersection of Shaw and Marks to get a new phone.

What she didn't know is the morning of July 28, 2024, would be the last time she would ever hear from her 30-year-old son.

By Friday, she found out her firstborn would never be calling again.

Fresno Police called Kelly to tell her Spencer's naked body had been found amongst dumpters behind a business on Blythe near Shaw on Thursday, nearly two miles from his destination and not on the route she believes he took.

"He said 'well we've seen this before. It was probably a drug overdose and he probably tore his clothes off because drugs will make you do that. And I was like? And they said we see this a lot in unhoused overdoses," Kelly said. "And I said 'wait a minute he wasn't unhoused. He had an apartment.' and they said 'well we think it's a drug overdose.'"

Kelly said her son struggled with alcohol but didn't believe drugs played a role in his death.

Fresno Police told Action News there were no signs of foul play and his body was turned over to the coroner's office.

Kelly waited for results from the coroner's office, but a week later, she says his body was released to the funeral home without an autopsy.

"And I said what about an autopsy? We need to do an autopsy, I need to know what happened to him," Kelly said. "And they said no the pathologist has decided that's not necessary that the toxicology will tell us the cause of death."

Trusting the process, Kelly went ahead with her son's cremation only to find out five weeks after his death, the toxicology report came back clean and the coroner told Kelly they were attributing his death to natural causes.

Unconvinced, the mother-turned-private investigator passed on leads to police, including the name of a man she says was found in her son's apartment the day before he was found dead and neighbors who she says arranged to beat her son up.

Kelly feels an autopsy and investigation weren't done because of how Spencer was found.

With no body to examine, she doesn't believe there is much more police can do beyond interviews.

She hopes this will at least be a lesson for investigations moving forward.

"I don't want to lump them in 'police are bad or anything' they're not..." Kelly said. "...I don't want anybody else to have to go through this. To have their child just because of the location they were found just assumed that they were on drugs."

Kelly says since her son's death, she's received dozens of messages from people in the community who say Spencer had a positive impact on them.

She's doing what she can to keep his memory alive, including hosting a 5k right before what would have been his 31st birthday in October.

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