A CRY FOR HELP
U.D. COPS MAKE 6 SAVES, INCLUDING 2 FOUND WHEN KIDS SCREAM FOR HELP
Veteran Officer Robert Bennett has seen the ugly effects of drug abuse countless times before, and the last thing he wanted was for two brothers, ages 4 and 1, to watch their parents overdosing on heroin – their mother laboring to breathe and their father already blue and feared dead behind a blocked bathroom door.
That’s what was running through Bennett’s mind as he stood outside the second-floor bathroom, with the scared, confused siblings hanging on his pant leg. It was the first time in his 10 years on the job that he was dispatched to such a tragic heroin call that involved parents at home with children.
“I hope I never see anything like that again … but with the number of calls involving heroin, it doesn’t seem likely,” Bennett, 30, said Friday.
The call came in about 8 p.m. Wednesday. Kendra Outen of Clover Lane reported seeing two children at the window of their home across the alley on Greenwood Avenue. One of the children was screaming for help.
“I have never seen a child be so scared,” said Outen, a 26-year-old mother of two boys with a third child on the way, Saturday.
“Mommy is upstairs. She is sick”
When Bennett arrived at the house in the 7000 block of Greenwood Avenue last week, 4-year-old Ethan opened the door. He and his diaper-clad brother, 1-yearold Linden, were holding hands.
“Where’s your mommy?” Bennett asked.
“Mommy is upstairs, she is sick,” Ethan responded to the officer.
Bennett said he the boys upstairs.
“Ethan pointed to the bathroom,” the officer said, recalling that he could hear “gargled breathing” beyond the closed door. followed
Bennett knocked on the door. He then turned the knob and pushed, but the door only opened an inch or two.
“I saw Sean. His back was up against the door, blocking it from opening. He was completely blue. I thought he was dead,” Bennett said, referring to 32-year-old Sean Dolhancryk, the boys’ father.
Bennett also saw their mother, 31-year-old Sandra Dicianno. The officer described her as lying on the floor, her body practically curled around the toilet.
“She was the one making the noises,” he said.
Bennett continued to push on the door. Considering himself to be in good shape, at the time he was surprised he couldn’t force it open.
“At the same time, I got the kids on my legs,” he recalled. “I can’t get the door open and I’m thinking that I really don’t want to get this door open … not until backup arrives and can get the kids off me.”
The whole time, Bennett said, “The 4-year-old had a blank stare, like he was going to cry. The was screaming.”
When Officer Kevin Donohue arrived at the scene, Bennett put the boys in a bedroom and told them to stay put, but they kept walking out into the hallway.
Keeping one eye on the kids, Bennett said he and Donohue managed to get the bathroom door open. Dolhancryk was removed first from the bathroom. Bennett said he administered Narcan, though paramedics later had to administer “a lot” more to him, he said. Narcan is the common 1-year-old name for naloxone, the drug used to counter the effects of an opioid, including heroin.
Describing Dicianno as “half in and half out,” Bennett said she, too, was eventually given Narcan by paramedics.
When she was being removed from the bathroom, he said she became combative toward Officer Donohue.
When Bennett saw Officer James Friel arriving at the scene, he sent the children downstairs and told the officer to remove them from the house.
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