MetroParks police revive OD victims with first use of naxalone

YOUNGSTOWN

One evening late this summer, Mill Creek MetroParks police officer Dustin Strines was on a routine patrol when he got a call dispatching him to the Judge Morley Performing Arts Pavilion.

Upon pulling into the parking lot, Strines saw two people performing CPR on a man who was unconscious in the back of a van.

Normally a venue for the MetroParks’ summer concert series, on Aug. 23, the Morley was the site of a drug overdose.

“He is dying. He took heroin,” one of the men shouted to Strines, according to a police report.

Strines, joined by his supervisor, Sgt. John Novosel, quickly sprang into action, recalling the training on the use of overdose-antidote naloxone that, until now, the MetroParks police department had never had to use.

Strines pulled a naloxone kit out of his cruiser and shot a dose in the unconscious man’s nose. Novosel then administered a second dose of the nasal spray, which revived the man.

Just as the first man regained consciousness, however, one of the other men at the scene began to lose it. Both men were taken by ambulance to a hospital, and ultimately survived.

For their life-saving efforts, Strines and Novosel recently were recognized at a MetroParks board meeting.

None of the three individuals at the scene faced charges, because state law now, under certain conditions, protects people at the scene of an overdose from arrest.

Although the incident was not the first in which someone had been revived from an overdose in the park – other agencies have responded to calls before – this marked the first time that MetroParks police used naloxone to save someone.

Read more about the situation in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.