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From left, Manning Fire Department Capt. James Pringle, Capt. David Ardis, Engineer K.J. Hall, Engineer Steven Elmore and Chief Mitch McElveen bow for prayer Friday at a ceremony in Manning commemorating the lives lost as a result of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
‘Our world changed forever’ PHOTOS BY KEITH GEDAMKE / THE SUMTER ITEM
Joe Powell, chemist for Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, holds a bag of heroin confiscated from a drug dealer. Powell uses a gas chromatograph to analyze confiscated drugs.
Sumter not spared from national rise in opioid overdoses BY ADRIENNE SARVIS adrienne@theitem.com Sumter is part of the growing national trend of increased heroin use as drug abuse fatalities have increased in the county, according to a news release from Sumter County Sheriff’s Office. Sumter County Coroner Harvin Bullock said there have been about five to six heroin and heroin/fentanyl overdoses in the past four months. Typically there is one overdose every two to three months, he said. Bullock said he has noticed an increase in overdoses among young people. In a news release, Sheriff Anthony Dennis said the agency has seen a rise in arrests involving heroin, methamphetamine
and fentanyl, which is mixed with heroin. Drug dealers often use baking soda, fentanyl and other ingredients to “cut” the pure drug — add in another substance to increase the amount of product — so it can be sold to more people, according to the release. Joe Powell, drug lab chemist for the sheriff's office, said part of the growing heroin overdose problem is that fentanyl, used as a sleep-inducing agent for surgical operations, is being used to cut heroin. Fentanyl amplifies the effects of heroin, he said. Along with the substances added to heroin, Dennis said users do not know the potency of the drug itself. Powell said the overall strength of heroin has in-
creased through the years. Buyers used to purchase about 3 percent heroin per packet, but now the amount of heroin is about 4 to 6 percent per packet, he said. The issue is that heroin slows down the heart rate, and higher concentrations can be deadly, he said. There have been some instances when users have been found dead with the needle still in their arm, he said. Dennis also warns residents about the health issues related to illegal drug use. There is no way of knowing how heroin and the junk added to it will affect people in the future, Powell said. You never see old heroin addicts, he said. Lt. Trevor Brown, head
of the sheriff’s office narcotics unit, said illegal use of prescription pills is also a problem in Sumter. Since January, the sheriff’s office has arrested 391 people for various drug offenses and has seized 16.63 grams of heroin valued at $15,954; 132.72 grams of methamphetamine valued at $26,524; 167.49 grams of crack cocaine valued at $33,488; 303.4 grams of cocaine valued at $30,340; and $20,000 worth of illegal cannabidiol products made from hemp oil. “We don’t want to see any more deaths from people using drugs,” Dennis said. “We will arrest anyone caught dealing in drugs and use every resource available to send these people to prison for a long time.”
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — He found the woman slumped over the steering wheel, an empty syringe on the floorboard and her skin dulling to a purplish blue. Dave McClure, an EMS supervisor, counted four faint breaths per minute. Without the antidote he carried, she'd be dead in five minutes. It was 3:25 p.m. on what was, so far, an ordinary Monday. For an EMT in this struggling city, bringing an addict back from the brink of opiate-fueled death counts as routine. But as McClure searched for an unscarred vein in the young woman's arm, dozens of others were
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shooting or snorting the same toxic powder she'd just taken. They started dropping, their muscles seizing, pupils shrinking to the size of pinheads. The heroin epidemic that had been quietly killing by the thousands began boiling to a climax that would traumatize the city and exhaust its emergency responders. McClure's radio squawked as he pushed in the IV full of a liquid called naloxone, which blocks the effects of opioids and jolts those overdosing back to life. "We've got another overdose," the dispatcher reported. "We've got two more." The woman's eyes blinked open. Red lights on the phone at the 911 dispatch center flashed faster and faster until all 16 lines were screaming. They called from the dining room of a rickety house, the
BY KONSTANTIN VENGEROWSKY konstantin@theitem.com
parking lot of a fast food restaurant, the bathroom of a gas station. "People are dying everywhere," one caller said. ••• In the next four hours of Aug. 15, 28 people overdosed in Huntington; 26 of them were saved. One man died at the hospital that night, and another was found dead and alone days later. Ambulances darted around town as cars pulled up at the hospital, dropped overdosing people at the emergency room doors and sped away. The drugs were so potent that the ordinary dose of naloxone wasn't enough; responders had to use two, sometimes three doses to bring them back to life.
City of Manning officials, firefighters, police officers and residents gathered for a ceremony Friday in Manning to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Clarendon County Council Chairman Dwight Stewart was the featured speaker at Friday's event. Stewart shared the story of his son, Drew Stewart, who was working as a videographer at WIS in Columbia at the time and was sent with a reporter to Washington, D.C., to report on the terrorist attack at the STEWART Pentagon. The 9/11 attacks killed 2,996 people and injured more than 6,000 in New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Four passenger airliners were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists. Two of the planes were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center, and a third plane was crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. It was the deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in United States history, with 343 firefighters and 72 police officers killed. "Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, is a date that will always live with us," Stewart said. "We can all remember where we were and what we were doing." Stewart said he and his wife, Sherry Stewart, watched on TV as the second jet crashed into the second World Trade Center tower almost 15 years ago. "The smoke and destruction were hard to watch as desperate people jumped to their deaths," he said. "We watched as the towers crumbled, and that was a scene that was too gruesome to watch. Our world changed forever." Stewart said that afternoon, he received a telephone call from his son, Drew Stewart, who was a videographer for WIS in Columbia at the time. "He told us that the television station was sending him and reporter Lisa Goddard to Washington, D.C., to report on the Pentagon, which had also been attacked," he said. That evening Dwight Stewart said he received a call from an emergency room in Alexandria, Virginia, in which he was told that his son and the reporter had
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4 Hours in Huntington: How the heroin epidemic choked a city BY CLAIRE GALOFARO The Associated Press
City of Manning commemorates 9/11
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