Courtesy the Hodge family

William Hodge, 15, was an avid skateboarder and animal lover, his mother says. He drowned June 24 at Elephant Butte Lake.

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A fisherman navigating the calm southernmost cove of Elephant Butte Lake found William Hodge's pale, blue body bobbing beneath the surface.

The 15-year-old from Albuquerque was curled up in fetal position, white froth clinging to his nose and mouth, his long skateboarder hairdo swaying in the murky water.

The fisherman touched the body with his canoe paddle, looked around to the rocky shores where the teen and two friends had camped, then called 911 on a cell phone.

Across the cove, William's friends, ages 15 and 16, paced the landscape, burning through a fever of scary hallucinations.

One saw a dead dog and was talking to a woman who wasn't really there, asking her to "bring my backpack along," according to a park ranger's report.

The other saw a man on a crucifix and thought a group of people had invaded their campsite.

Neither knew what day it was.

Reality had melted away entirely in the previous night's experimentation with tea made from the seeds of jimson weed, a beautiful, deadly plant found around the southern New Mexico lake.

Also known as locoweed or moonflower for its white, trumpet-shaped blossoms that open at night, jimson weed is common in Albuquerque, growing along roadsides, in the bosque, even outside a restaurant in Nob Hill.

It is not illegal, but its dangerous power — if no secret — is not widely known. William's mother, Toppin Hodge, hopes her son's accidental drowning June 24 will change that and add jimson weed to the list of warnings parents give their children.

"I want everyone to know the facts of it. It's poison," Hodge said. "It's scary, the stories that are coming out."

A park ranger's report of the incident, pieced together through interviews, offers scant details.

The three teenagers were dropped off to camp by themselves, something they had done before.

They started a campfire, cooked dinner, threw a football, went swimming. At some point, they brewed tea from seeds of a jimson weed plant.

Beyond that, everything is hazy. It's not clear how William, a strong swimmer and trained scuba diver, drowned.

One of the teens thought his night scrambling along the lake shore was actually spent playing video games at William's house in northeast Albuquerque and in his home skateboarding in his room.

The other teen was sure William had been murdered by the group that invaded the campsite — which was accessible only by boat.

According to interviews cited in the rangers' report, William was the "good kid" in the bunch; the other two teens were more experienced with drugs. One was on probation for selling a large amount of drugs to an undercover police officer, according to court records.

Toppin Hodge said it was a moment's decision — not his friends — that turned her son's life from innocence to tragedy.

"Everybody has a choice. You can choose the action that leads down the wrong path, or you can be strong and make the right decision," Hodge said.

And for all the coaching on good decision-making she poured on William and his older sister, Jenny, 16, Hodge never once thought to warn against the Datura stramonium, or jimson weed, plant.

"Who would have thought," she said.

Hodge said friends of William are having a "very, very hard time" dealing with the drowning and surrounding circumstances.

"One friend just went into the (mental health) hospital, and another had a panic attack," Jenny Hodge said.

The 15- and 16-year-old friends who were with him at the lake have been shocked into sobriety, she said.

"It really does suck that such an innocent person had to die for that to happen," Jenny Hodge said. "For me, he was always spending the night at his friends' houses, so that's kind of what it feels like."

Toppin Hodge thinks her daughter hasn't quite accepted the loss.

She herself is just starting to let it sink in.

"He loved to skateboard," Toppin Hodge remembers, noting that she supported her son and put a "Skateboarding is not a crime" bumper sticker on her own vehicle.

"He was just learning to drive. He loved animals."

She tells a story of William and his cat and lets the very tip of her sadness peek through her stoicism.

William was at a city skatepark when a man dropped a box full of cats in the parking lot and fled. William, called `Frogger' by his friends because of his wide-set eyes, found some of the cats up in a tree and was able to get a hold of one of them.

"He called me up frantically, `Mom, we have to keep the cat,' " Toppin Hodge said.

Bazil, the lanky young cat, now purrs his way through the Hodge home in northeast Albuquerque.

"He (Bazil) goes into his (William's) room," Toppin Hodge said. "I'm trying to clean it out."

Toppin Hodge's husband, Robert Hodge, was too emotional to talk about his son's death.

Camille King, the mother who chaperoned the camping trip with her 15-year-old son, the 16-year-old friend and William, said she and her son are struggling with the emotions.

She's dealing with it by targeting the jimson weed plant at Elephant Butte State Park. She has called the park director and the state's natural resources department to push for eradication of the plant or at least warning signs in popular parking and camping areas.

She visited the park on July 21 and removed four plants from the parking lot where the teens told her they got the jimson weed seeds. Nine other plants were out of her reach, she said.

Toppin Hodge said she supports this endeavor but feels education about the plant is the best way to prevent such heartbreak for other families.

"They (teens) think they are invincible. They need to know, and they need to remember it (their decisions) affects too many people." she said. "This plant is everywhere; it's natural. It's beautiful, and it's deadly."