Two people died from suspected drug overdoses in Madison County last week, but a deputy was able to save one young man while his friends stood by helplessly watching.
“He brought the guy back with CPR. He did an excellent job,” Madison County sheriff’s Capt. Jimmy Patton said Monday.
The life-saving effort occurred shortly after 3 p.m. Saturday, on Project Street in Colbert, according to the sheriff’s report.
Deputy Joshua Epps responded to the call, in which dispatchers notified him an 18-year-old man had overdosed on fentanyl. The drug is a synthetic opioid that is deadly if consumed improperly.
“Dispatch had let me know on the way that the other people there did not know how to do CPR,” Epps wrote in his report.
The deputy found the teenager, who was not breathing and had no pulse, lying on the floor with two other young men standing over him.
“I continued doing CPR until I heard a deep gasp,” Epps reported. At that time, he rolled the man over where he vomited. The man’s breathing remained labored until medics arrived, Epps said.
After the man recovered, he declined going to a hospital, but family members told the officer they would watch him.
The outcome was not that good for two other men.
Deputies responded at about 8 a.m. March 21 to a home on Garnett Ward Road, Hull, where a 22-year-old man was unconscious due to a suspected overdose, according to the report.
The man was transported to a hospital in Athens, but reports show he died the next day.
On March 24, deputies were called to Wooddale Street in Hull, where again they found a man dead from a possible overdose of drugs.
Officers did recover drug paraphernalia at the house, Patton said.
Autopsies have been ordered on the men to determine the type drugs in their systems, according to Patton.
A death also occurred this week in Madison County.
Patton said deputies went to a location on Monday where a person died from a suspected drug overdose, but he did not have details available.
Source: Newbreak
