‘It’s not just coming, it’s here’

Officials: Abuse of painkillers and heroin is on the rise.

When two Rome police officers were called to a car crash, they may have been relieved to see the black Volkswagen Beetle sitting essentially unharmed amid the wreckage of a privacy fence.

Then they saw the man and woman slumped unresponsive in the front seat.

The doors were all locked and banging on the windows didn’t wake them. Neither did yelling or shaking the vehicle. Finally, one officer smashed out a back window with his baton. The unconscious couple’s shallow breaths and faint pulses — along with the presence of a used syringe on the floorboard — made the next step urgent.

“We’ve deployed Narcan,” came a voice on the radio to update the 911 dispatcher directing an emergency medical services crew to the scene.

The nasal-spray version of naloxone is used for emergency treatment of a known or suspected opioid overdose. Local first responders started carrying it last year.

Rome Assistant Police Chief Debbie Burnett said her officers have used it four times since it was first issued in early 2017, and three of those cases were this year.

“It’s starting to increase is the problem; heroin and opium are starting to increase,” Burnett said. “I know Fire and EMS use it more than we do and the county (police department) uses it too.”

William Youngblood, 34, of 21 Rockwood Place, was driving last week when the VW entered the lot of the Circle K, 1501 Martha Berry Highway, jumped the curb and hit the privacy fence in back. His passenger was Jaime Susanne Harmon, a 34-year-old woman from Ridgeway, Virginia.

By the time Redmond EMS arrived, the Narcan had started to work. Youngblood and Harmon were rushed to the hospital with resuscitation masks helping them breathe. They recovered to tell investigators their tales.

According to Rome Police Department reports:

During a search of the VW officers found two used syringes, which were sent to the GBI Crime Lab for analysis. Meanwhile, Harmon said during questioning that “the test would come back positive for heroin.”

The couple said they met in a rehabilitation facility and had spent the past few days together. Harmon said she’d used heroin. Youngblood contended he was “clean” and had just fallen asleep at the wheel.

Police took Youngblood to jail, where he was cited for DUI and released. Potential charges of possessing opium or a derivative and drug-related objects are noted in the report.

“If the syringes and the material inside come back positive, they’ll both be charged with that as well,” Burnett said.

Targeting the

epidemic

Opioid addiction is a national epidemic, declared after the death rate from synthetics spiked 72.2 percent from 2014 to 2015 and doubled the following year.

In Floyd County, prescriptions for opioid painkillers such as oxycodone and morphine were issued at a rate of 153.3 for every 100 residents in 2016, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study reported. The state recently tightened regulations for prescribers, but GBI officials have said that’s been fueling a rise in street drugs like heroin.

Ansley Silvers is the director of addictive diseases in the Rome office of Highland Rivers Health and serves on the Georgia attorney general’s Statewide Opioid Task Force. She said that the threat of an epidemic in Floyd County is now reality.

“It’s not just coming, it’s here,” Silvers said.