With so many other bad things going on in the news, it is sometimes easy to forget that the United States is in the throes of a drug abuse epidemic, but the citizens of Austin, Texas, were jolted back to that realization last week when a mass overdose incident left multiple people dead.
Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services officials reported that an incredible 71 overdose cases were reported last week, 37 on Monday, 27 on Tuesday another seven on Wednesday, according to KXAN-TV in Austin.
Officials said at least eight of those overdoes cases were “opiate-related.”
“It is apparent there is a deadly batch of illicit narcotics in our community,” Austin Assistant Police Chief Eric Fitzgerald said during a news conference on Tuesday, according to KXAN.
When the calls began flooding in, medics, police officers and the non-profit group Texas Harm Reduction Alliance responded.
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EMTs reported handing out more than 400 doses of Narcan to help addicts combat their overdoses, KXAN reported.
Lily Hughes with Texas Harm Reduction Alliance noted that the tainted drugs causing the overdoses was widely spread and forced her group to take extra measures.
“We sourced more Narcan from other people in the community and made sure to have enough and then we went out and we made a point to talk to every single person we encountered about the risk of overdose, what’s happening in the supply for people who maybe previously did not want to use Narcan,” she said, according to KXAN.
“We took extra time to do training and talk them through, and made sure every single person we talked to knew what was going on,” Hughes added.
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At least eight died from the drugs.
The bad drugs seem to have first been distributed in Austin’s downtown area, but the overdoses soon spread to other neighborhoods, according to KXAN.
In a separate report, KXAN reported that two suspects were later arrested on suspicion of selling the tainted drugs.
Austin police reported the arrest of 55-year-old Johnny Lee Wright, who was charged with a third-degree felony, possession of a firearm by a felon. The police said he has “several previous felony convictions.”
Officials also said that they had surveillance video of Wright handing out the drugs in “multiple hand-to-hand transactions.”
The video reportedly shows a man that the police are calling a “person of interest” handing something to Wright who then, in turn, hands the item to a customer. Austin police confirmed that the item Wright is supposedly handing out is “suspected narcotics.”
“This is a common practice in open-air drug markets, as the dealer attempts to distance themselves from the narcotics transaction,” the affidavit of Wright’s arrest says, according to KXAN.
Both Wright and the person of interest are “known by officers who regularly worked the downtown area as narcotics dealers,” KXAN reported. The police also said that Wright and the other man on the surveillance video are likely the source of the drugs that caused the overdoses.
The second man was not publicly identified by the police but he has been arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance.
