![Heroin overdose. [Shutterstock - SanchaiRat - 479165098]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/shutterstock_479165098-e1473445373969.jpg "Heroin overdose. [Shutterstock - SanchaiRat - 479165098]")
A 14-year-old girl who was mowing her lawn stumbled upon a man suffering from a heroin overdose in the bushes at her home Saturday in Dayton, Ohio.
Police in Dayton dealt with a number of near-fatal heroin overdoses over the weekend as the substance continues to ravage Ohio. Authorities responded to a call at an apartment complex Saturday morning reporting someone had found a dead body on the property. Officers on scene concluded the man was using heroin and died of an overdose, reports WHIO.
The property manager at the apartment complex called police after his 14-year-old daughter discovered the body while cutting grass.
“We have a young man it looks like in between our apartments and he’s non-functional; he looks dead,” the unidentified man told a police dispatcher, according to WHIO. “He’s behind the bushes. I nudged him with my weed eater.”
Police in Dayton also responded to a car wreck Saturday caused by heroin. The driver, who emergency responders revived with the overdose reversal drug Narcan, passed out behind the wheel after using a needle to inject heroin and drove his car through a median before crashing and knocking over a streetlamp. (RELATED: Heroin Overdose Insurance Claims Jump 1,078 Percent In Opioid-Plagued Ohio)
Ohio is being hit particularly hard by the national opioid epidemic, which claimed a record 33,000 lives in the U.S. in 2015. The opioid death rate in the state spiked 13 percent between 2014 and 2015, among the largest increases in the country. Heroin deaths increased by nearly 20 percent over the same period, claiming 1,444 lives.
The epidemic is posing risks to kids who are exposed to the drugs and other dangers by their parents. Officials in Ohio say opioids are the main driver of a 19 percent spike in the number of kids removed from parental custody to foster care since 2010.
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