New Haven declares emergency after mystery drug kills 3

By Dave Canton | dcanton@repub.com
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on June 25, 2016 at 8:56 AM, updated June 25, 2016 at 8:57 AM

 NEW HAVEN, Conn.— New Haven city officials have declared a health emergency after an influx of an unknown drug combination has killed at least three and overdosed up to 20 more in just a 24 hour period.


The New Haven Register reports that public health officials say a mixture of heroin and fentanyl being sold on the streets is unlike anything they have seen before.

"This isn't just fentanyl, this is something in combination with that," Gail D'Onofrio, director of emergency medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital told reporters. "It is causing havoc in patient's lungs."

Fentanyl is an opioid painkiller said to be 50 to 100 times the strength of uncut heroin.
D'Onofrio said several overdose patients were on ventilators to help them breathe. She said it is unusual to see all the overdose patients show up presenting the same symptoms.

Officials declared the emergency late Thursday night after they saw an inordinate number of drug overdoses. Fire officials said they began responding to emergency calls Thursday morning and continued throughout the day.

The drug appears to be so strong that several patients needed multiple doses of Narcan to save their lives, and the city's supply ran out Thursday evening. The state Department of Public Health has since sent 700 doses of Narcan to the area.

Officials said they counted 20 overdoses within the 24 hour period, and three people died after they went into cardiac arrest. Two of the deaths were reported in New Haven and one in West Haven.
According to authorities, several of the overdose patients told police they thought they were buying cocaine, not heroin or a combination of drugs.

Anyone with information is asked to contact New Haven police on their anonymous tip line at 203-946-6098.

Narcan is available from the local health department. Call 203-901-7687 for more information.

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• 2 Pembroke brothers die of overdoses on same day

• By The Patriot Ledger

  Posted Jun. 24, 2016 at 10:11 AM
  
  
  

  PEMBROKE — The epidemic of drug overdoses in the state and across the country has taken an extraordinary toll on one family in Pembroke: In a single day, and in the same house, two brothers overdosed and died.

  Michael Woodbury was 37, and his younger brother, Jonathan Woodbury, was 33. Their deaths less than two weeks ago have shattered the family they left behind: a mother, father, sister and one young daughter.

  "We're all hurting here," said Mike Woodbury, the father of the two men. "I'm still shaking."

  As Kathy Woodbury lowered her head to her right hand and began to cry, her 12-year-old granddaughter from Marshfield leaned in to give her a long hug. Kathy Woodbury is the mother of the two men who died.

  Above all else and in the midst of immense grief, the Woodbury family wants people to know how vicious the cycle of heroin and opioid addiction has become.

  "Something has to be done," said Mike Woodbury.

  For a decade, addiction held his only sons, Michael and Jonathan Woodbury, in its grip. Their surviving family hopes that their loss might become a lesson for other families, or even policymakers, and help roll back the rising numbers of overdose deaths.
  

  Michael and Jonathan Woodbury had been making progress in staying clean. The younger brother had been clean for three years. The older one had just crossed a one-year threshold.

  "They tried to get away from it — they really did," said their father. "And we tried everything to save them."

  Overdose deaths in Plymouth County alone rose 22 percent between 2014 and 2015, from 117 to 151. Statewide, there were more than 1,500 opioid-related deaths in 2015, triple the number from 2010, according to the State Department of Public Health.

  Mike Woodbury suspects that when his two sons relapsed earlier this month, they likely used the exact same drug — with fatal consequences.

  "They went together and bought it or somebody gave it to them," Mike Woodbury said.

  The Plymouth County District Attorney's Office is investigating their deaths and awaiting toxicology results from the Chief Medical Examiner, which could take several weeks.

  The question is whether the drug was heroin laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid far more potent than morphine or heroin that is sometimes mixed with heroin to increase its effects.

  Police on the South Shore have said that fentanyl is also appearing increasingly on the street in its pure form, sometimes disguised as heroin, and has been blamed for deadly overdoses.

  The young Woodbury men were in separate rooms in the house when they overdosed, their father said.

  Their sudden deaths came less than four months after their 79-year-old grandmother died of cancer.

  "It hit them hard, and maybe why they relapsed," said Nicole Loud, their sister, who lives in Marshfield.

  "They were crazy close," said Kathy Woodbury of the connection between her two sons and her mother, who also lived with them.

  Loud said the outpouring of support from the community has helped her family in the wake of so much loss.

  "We've just been crying," she said. "But there are all these people coming and hugging us."

  The family hopes that sharing its intense pain can change the course for another family.

  "Let's save a life," Mike Woodbury said. "Maybe their deaths can somehow save somebody else’s life."