Authorities arrested a 12-year-old girl for bringing a bag full of the deadly painkiller fentanyl to her middle school, which a teacher found on the floor of a hallway.
Police were called to Indian Lake Middle School in Ohio on Thursday after the teacher found the bag of white powder and brought it to the school principle. Drug-sniffing dogs did a sweep of he hallway where the powder was discovered, which later tested positive for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid roughly 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, reports 10TV.
Officials said they were shocked by the test results, calling the situation, “just mind-boggling and very scary.” An investigation linked the bag of drugs to an unidentified 12-year-old girl at the school, who appeared before a juvenile court Friday.
The girl told a judge she brought the drugs to school after watching a scene from the movie 21 Jump Street, though officers said they are, “not quite sure what her motive was or what she was trying to duplicate.”
“She knew what she had. I don’t believe she knew how dangerous it was,” Washington Township Police Chief Rick Core told 10TV. “I hate to think of what could have possibly happened had that baggie been broke open or multiple exposures for kids in that building.”
The 12-year-old is currently being held and screened for drugs while the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation retests the powder to confirm the presence of fentanyl. Once the test comes back the Logan County Prosecutor will consider filing charges.
The girl’s parents say they, “have no idea where this came from,” telling 10TV, “They can test us, they can search our house. This came from somebody else.”
Indian Lake Interim Superintendent Rob Underwood said his concern is now for the welfare of the girl in the aftermath of the incident.
“We’re sure that there’s got to be other contributing factors here, and we want to make sure we can get that student the help that they deserve,” Underwood told 10TV.
Fentanyl overtook heroin as the deadliest substance in the U.S. in 2016, claiming 19,413 lives in 2017, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has previously warned that it only takes two milligrams of fentanyl, “the equivalent of a few grains of table salt,” to cause a fatal overdose.
Opioids are killing a record number of people in Ohio, which now has the second highest death rate from drug overdoses in the U.S. behind only West Virginia.
Nationally, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under age 50, killing more than 64,000 people in 2016.
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