A woman poisoned three officers after she blew heroin smoke at police conducting a drug raid, causing them to become “violently ill.”
Authorities rushed the three officers to a hospital for treatment after the incident, which unfolded Monday in Arlington, Wash. Police executed an arrest warrant at the Arlington Motor Inn looking for a male suspect, but when they entered the room, they found a woman using heroin, reports King 5.
She was allegedly smoking the substance and became aggressive with officers as they tried to arrest her.
“Then she started blowing the smoke everywhere towards our officers,” Kristin Banfield, communications manager for the City of Arlington, told King 5. “So our officers quickly detained her, one of our officers actually tackled her and was able to get the heroin away from her.”
Authorities suspect the heroin was laced with fentanyl, a painkiller roughly 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Officials said the prospect of exposure to potent opioids during drug raids is “very scary for our officers.” The officers were back at the police station when they began feeling ill.
“They started exhibiting symptoms of exposure, direct exposure to the heroin smoke,” Banfield told King 5. “So they started experiencing nausea, headaches, just feeling very lethargic and sluggish and then they started getting violently ill.”
The DEA issued new guidance to police departments across the country June 6 on how to handle heroin due to the increasing prevalence of fentanyl. The substance is often cut into drug supplies and even put into knock-off pills.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said it only takes two milligrams of fentanyl, “the equivalent of a few grains of table salt,” to cause a fatal overdose.
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