By Beth Burger and Jim Woods
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The 1-year-old boy crawled out of the women’s restroom at the Circle K store.
Donald Mollick saw that the boy’s mother was unconscious inside the restroom at the Petzinger Road convenience store on the Southeast Side and called 911. Another customer, a nurse, stepped in to administer CPR to Deasa Smith.
Smith, 25, later told Columbus police that she and her boyfriend had injected heroin at the Circle K on April 12. Officers turned the child over to Franklin County Children Services. Smith was charged with child endangering, a first-degree misdemeanor, and is awaiting trial.
“Make it stop,” Mollick said. “This heroin use has got to stop.”
The number of heroin overdoses in public places has been rising the past three years, Columbus Division of Fire records reviewed by The Dispatch show.
Columbus Fire statistics for medics administering naloxone — the brand name is Narcan —for drug overdoses show that 38 percent of of those overdoses from January to May occurred in public places. That’s up from 35 percent in 2016 and 33 percent in 2015.
Streets were the most common public place for overdoses, followed by parking lots. One couple overdosed in a Metro Parks parking lot and were discovered when police found their children crying outside the vehicle.
Medics also have been called to overdoses in schools, nursing facilities, grocery stores, movie theaters, restaurants and places of worship, records show.
Sometimes addicts use heroin as soon as they have it in their hands, said Columbus Fire Assistant Chief Jim Davis. But there’s also another line of thinking when it comes to using in public.
“If they can’t use with a friend, then the next best alternative would be some place they’re going to be found quicker,” he said. "(Overdosing) in public places, with kids in the car with them — to the normal healthy person, there’s no rhyme or reason to it.
“We try to help them. We don’t understand where they’re at because we’re not walking in their shoes.”
Finding the dealers
An overdose case near the Ohio State University campus drew national attention.
On March 20, Clinton Township fire paramedics were called at the dinner hour to the AMC theater complex at Lennox Town Center. There, they found Cody Derby, 26, unconscious from an apparent overdose in a theater where “Beauty and the Beast” was being shown.
Derby was rushed to nearby Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
An autopsy showed he died from an overdose of heroin and cocaine. The Franklin County Heroin Overdose Prevention & Education Task Force is handling the investigation.
“We’ve identified who we think the dealer is. We’ve been working on that case. Hopefully in the near future, we’ll be able to charge someone,” said Chief Deputy Rick Minerd, who oversees investigations at the Franklin County sheriff’s office, including the task force.
The task force, which began in February 2016, pairs up social workers with detectives to investigate overdoses, both fatal and nonfatal. Of the 153 cases they’ve investigated this year, 27 of them — or 17 percent — occurred in public places.
“There’s a higher likelihood they will be discovered,” he said. “It’s almost like ... ‘Let me be somewhere people are going to find me.’ ”
Detectives want to find the dealers who sold the drugs leading to the overdoses.
“These cases are difficult to work. They’re also difficult to prosecute, too,” Minerd said.
Phone apps sometimes are used to facilitate transactions, but users and dealers often use code words.
On Feb. 9, Dale Rogers, who was at the Manor at Whitehall, a rehabilitation center, ingested fentanyl and died.
In that case, drugs were referred to as “Chinese food,” and investigators were able to access Rogers’ phone to find the dealer’s contact information.
“We took the phone ... and ordered up. Sure enough, the dealer delivered again,” Minerd said.
A warrant for involuntary manslaughter has been issued for the dealer’s arrest.
Grocery store nightmare
Kathy Pittman, 61, vividly remembers the Saturday afternoon of April 15.
That day, a routine visit to the neighborhood Kroger at East 7th Avenue and North High Street turned into a harrowing encounter with a woman overdosing.
Pittman entered the restroom and found a young woman “sprawled on the floor with the water running in the sink.”
“There was no pulse, no respiration or heartbeat,” Pittman said. “She had started turning blue.”
Pittman ran out and told a pharmacist to call 911. She returned to the restroom, where a man and another woman joined her in trying to save the woman’s life.
“She started reviving. You could see her heart literally beating in her chest,” Pittman said.
Then, a woman who said she was a friend of the overdose victim, burst into the restroom and said she had Narcan.
She administered the drug and the woman, in her mid-20s, regained full consciousness by the time Columbus fire paramedics arrived.
Pittman, an administrative assistant with an OB-GYN program at Wexner Medical Center, said she occasionally sees women who abuse heroin.
“I knew how bad it was from working at the clinic,” Pittman said. “But to actually see it is a whole different thing.”
Columbus Public Health is holding free training on how to administer naloxone. The first session will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Columbus Division of Fire, 3639 Parsons Ave. A second session will be held at 6 p.m. June 20 at Christian Church, 3371 Noe Bixby Road. A limited number of free naloxone kits will be available.
Copyright 2017 The Columbus Dispatch