Warren police say 12 people drug overdosed, three died, in last four days
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
After personally reviving one overdose victim – and learning other people had also overdosed and two had died – Lt. Greg Hoso decided a public warning was needed.
“I called the chief, and I said ‘We need to do something. It’s just going to keep going,’” Hoso said, recounting the decision to contact news media to alert the public to the rash of drug overdoses that hit the city late last week.
Once the weekend was over, the tally in Warren was 12 overdoses, three of them fatal.
Hoso, commander of the Warren Police Department Street Crimes Unit, said one of the messages he wants the public to get is that the substance that caused the overdoses is a “pure white” powder. Heroin can be several colors, but normally not pure white, he said.
“They think it’s heroin, but it’s much more potent. It’s stronger than they are used to,” Hoso said.
He doesn’t condone the use of heroin, he said, but, “If you’re going to use it, don’t use the pure white.”
The latest surge in Trumbull County overdose deaths has come during one of the most-deadly years for overdose deaths in the county’s history. In June, the Trumbull County coroner’s office said there had been 35 overdose deaths in the first four months, with about 16 more likely to be ruled that way.
At that rate, the county is likely to exceed the record number from 2007, which was 64, officials say.
Hoso said he doesn’t know what is in the substance that has caused this weekend’s overdoes and deaths. It will take several weeks for lab results to provide that information.
It’s also impossible to know whether the surge is likely to end soon.
“Depending on how much was brought in, it could last a couple of weeks,” he said. He added that it’s also possible some addicts may be actually drawn to try the substance because of its potency, despite the dangers.
Hoso used the opiate-overdose antidote drug Narcan on a man in car at the intersection of Arlington and Federal streets Friday. The man was purple and gasping for breath at the time.
“When they come to, they are oblivious,” Hoso said. “They don’t know where they are at.”
The man’s car was sitting in the intersection when people spotted him and called 911, he said.
Another officer also revived an overdose victim Friday using Narcan.
Those two marked the sixth and seventh times the department’s officers have revived individuals using Narcan since the department started carrying the drug in cruisers in April.
Warren Township police had a report of an overdose victim at 6 a.m. Saturday on Dilley Road, and there are reports that other overdoses were averted elsewhere in the county over the weekend.
The third of the three suspected overdose deaths took place at Downtown Motor Inn, 777 Mahoning Ave. NW.
A man asked Warren police Sunday evening to check the motel for his son, Brian Williams, 43, of Garrettsville because the father had seen the son’s truck at the motel.
When the Warren Fire Department used bolt cutters to enter the room, they found Williams deceased in the bathroom and suspected drugs, including suspected heroin, in the room.
One of the Thursday overdose deaths occurred in a sober house at 215 Bonnie Brae Avenue NE, where Adam Pierce, 37, of Columbiana was found unresponsive and face-down in bed.
The sober house manager, Nick Meehan, told police that Pierce had refused to give a urine sample earlier that day.
Pierce also was named in a March 29 Howland police report in which he overdosed in a car with Maurice L. Bryant, 27, of Shady Lane in Howland.
Police received a call from a citizen saying he had seen two males in a car in the Panera Break parking lot on Elm Road heating something on a spoon with a syringe in their hand. A child was in the back seat.
Police spotted the car traveling south on North Road at a high rate of speed. When Howland police caught up to the vehicle, Bryant was outside of the car yelling something was wrong with Pierce, who was in a fetal position and unresponsive.
The boy in the car was Pierce’s son, 13, and he advised officers he watched his father ingest a white powder in the restaurant parking lot. Ambulance personnel revived Pierce, who told them he had ingested less than half an ounce of heroin.
Pierce, who also had an address in Mineral Ridge, was later charged with child endangering and pleaded not guilty in Warren Municipal Court. His next pretrial hearing was set for Sept. 25.
The Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force and Trumbull County Sheriff Thomas Altiere called a press conference Friday to discuss the indictment of Bryant on a charge of involuntary manslaughter for purportedly giving a fatal dose of fentanyl to Megan Fitzgerald, 24, of Champion, April 10.
Altiere and Lt. Jeff Orr of TAG, said the indictment was one of the first times this year that law enforcement has successfully brought charges against someone suspected of providing a lethal dose of drugs to a user.
Hoso said Warren police have tried to investigate overdose deaths as crime “as much as we can,” such as confiscating cellphones to “track back” to dealers, but it’s difficult to get cooperation from witnesses.