Police arrested a father shooting up heroin at a youth baseball game in Wisconsin Wednesday after he accidentally called the police on himself.
During the baseball game near Kennedy Middle School in Germantown, Wis., a parent accidentally dialed 911. When the police dispatcher called the phone back, the man said there was no need to worry and it was a simple misdial. The dispatcher sent an officer to the scene anyway, which they said is policy regardless of the circumstances surrounding an emergency call, reports ABC 2.
The dispatcher also ran the man’s name through their system and found a warrant out for his arrest. The police eventually found him at the baseball field watching his son’s youth game. An officer searched the father and found heroin, a needle and a spoon in his pockets.
“Even if they say everything is fine we still send an officer,” Lt. David Huesemann told ABC 2. “He did say that he did shoot up heroin just prior to our arrival at the scene. And he did say his preferred way of shooting up heroin is through his neck.”
The man, who remains unidentified, is charged with possession but officers do not suspect he was dealing the drug. Parents and grandparents who watched officers take the man into custody said the situation was not entirely shocking given the high levels of opioid abuse in the state.
“I wouldn’t expect it necessarily, but I’m not surprised by it either,” Robert Walczak, who was with his granddaughter, told ABC 2. “That’s too bad. Too bad for his kid too.”
Heroin overdoses killed 281 people in Wisconsin in 2015, accounting for more deaths than car accidents and tripling the number of fatalities attributed to heroin in 2010. Much of the spike in fatalities is blamed on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.
The epidemic is increasingly affecting children and even unborn babies. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services revealed in February the rate of babies born exposed to opioids more than quadrupled over the past decade. Officials recorded 598 babies born with an opioid addiction in 2015, up from 142 cases in 2006.
A record 33,000 Americans died from opioid related overdoses in 2015, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.
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