March 29, 2017
The heroin epidemic is reaching frightening new heights in Ohio — where a father was thrown behind bars this week after his 13-year-old son “got into his stuff” and overdosed, a report says.
Robert Baker Wylie, 40, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with drug possession and child endangerment after he and his co-worker brought the boy to a local fire station for help, according to WDTN.
The Dayton teen was unconscious upon his arrival and received a shot of Narcan, an overdose antidote, from medics — but did not respond, the local station reports.
Cops said he was rushed to a nearby hospital. His condition was unclear as of 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.
“At the hospital they had gotten a heartbeat back, but did not know anything further,” Dayton Police Officer Joseph Drumm wrote in the police report, according to WHIO.
The man who was with Wylie after the incident reportedly told police that he was on drugs, and that his son “got into his stuff.”
Wylie was promptly taken into custody and transported to Montgomery County Jail, where he was waiting to appear in court Thursday.
His arrest is just the latest example of a frightening trend in Ohio — as more and more parents are getting busted using heroin and other drugs around their children.
Last week, a 9-year-old girl in Queensgate phoned for help from the backseat of her parents’ moving car — saving both of their lives, and her own — after realizing that they had overdosed.
A week before that, four children woke up to find their mom and dad dead from an apparent overdose and were also forced to alert police themselves.
There have been at least a half dozen kids in Centerville, Cincinnati and Cleveland who have made similar calls in March alone, according to the Dayton Daily News.
In January, there were nearly 50 fatal overdoses in just the Cleveland area.
The Ohio Department of Health reports that the number of opioid-related deaths have jumped from 296 in 2003 to 2,590 in 2015 — a 775 percent increase. Officials expect the numbers to be even higher for 2016, once the data is all tallied.
Things have reportedly gotten so bad in Canton that the local coroner’s office has had to bring in a cold-storage trailer to house all the extra bodies.
“We need another facility or expand the facility,” Rick Walters, of the Stark County coroner’s office, told the Washington Post last week. “We can’t continue to rely on the state.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/60492f87-d194-352d-b349-4b01f8107d6f/teen-od’s-on-heroin-after.html
