Ole Miss Death Investigation Takes New Turn

A Yemen-born Oxford vape-shop owner is now part of the paper trail around two University of Mississippi deaths, even as state officials say they do not see a clean line from his old case to the bodies. Amer Alowdi, 40, owns Puffs Vape, Tobacco and Beer Store near campus. He became a naturalized citizen after entering the United States in 2014.

Federal and state records show he was already a target. In March 2020, agents made controlled buys of cartridges they believed held illegal synthetic cannabinoid at a Texaco he owned. They later followed him from a store to a Tupelo warehouse, stopped his vehicle, and seized vape products, illicit cartridges, and boxes of Viagra.

He was indicted in 2022 for trafficking hundreds of doses of an illegal synthetic cannabinoid. A 2024 motion to dismiss failed. Conviction could mean 40 years and a $1 million fine. Before prosecutors could bring him into court, he left the country.

This week’s turn is the store, not the old warehouse stop. After Aidan Hamilton, 18, and Robert Strang, 20, were found dead on Sept. 21, investigators focused on packaged kratom-like products recovered at both scenes. Purchases traced Hamilton to Puffs. Two men tied to the shop, Yahya Mohamed Mosleh, 51, and Islam Mohamed, 18, were arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute.

A search after a controlled buy pulled more than 500 units of alleged kratom and other suspected narcotics from the shop. An informant who asked for “7 O Kratom based pills” was sold a package from a drawer under the register. A clerk warned the buyer to be careful “because people were dying from them.”

Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell still would not pin the deaths on Alowdi’s 2022 file. “I don’t think there’s a direct relation to this particular case,” he said. He did promise “enhanced efforts in and around Oxford” against anyone selling unlawful products.

That is the new shape of the investigation: a fugitive owner, two arrested clerks, a store that sold kratom-like pills, and two dead students whose toxicology is not finished. Officials keep repeating that kratom has not been proven as the cause.

The indictment that sent Alowdi running was about synthetic cannabinoid, not the Smax Pseudo-DHM tablets found near Hamilton and Strang. The overlap is geography and a shop that kept showing up in narcotics work.

Oxford is a small grid. When two students die on the same day and the same brand of packaged product appears at both scenes, every store that sold that product becomes a lead. Alowdi’s empty chair is now one of those leads.