Police arrested a Massachusetts man Thursday who passed out behind the wheel while shooting fentanyl before crashing into another vehicle.
Officers in Taunton, Massachusetts, responded to reports of an SUV driving erratically on local roads in the community, eventually finding a Kia Sorento still in drive on Arnold Street with a man inside who was having difficulty staying conscious, reports Wicked Local.
Authorities said the driver, 30-year-old Justin Holmes, was sweating profusely and unable to follow basic police instructions. Officers suspected a heroin overdose after finding a burnt spoon and hypodermic needles inside the vehicle, however, Holmes later said he thought the substance he took was fentanyl, a synthetic opioid roughly 30 to 50 times more powerful than pure heroin. (RELATED: Father High On 15 Bags Of Heroin Busted After Brief Pursuit With Children In The Car)
“He stated he knew it was fentanyl immediately after taking it, because it was so strong and had an almost instant effect on him,” officials wrote in a report, according to Wicked Local.
Holmes allegedly crashed into another vehicle on Tremont Street before coming to a stop on Arnold Street. The driver of the other vehicle escaped without injury. Holmes, who officials said was apologetic over the incident, faces a number of charges including operating under the influence of drugs, leaving the scene of an accident with property damage resulting, and possession of less than a gram of a Class A controlled substance.
The opioid epidemic is increasingly causing dangers on American roadways, recent data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database reveals. Traffic accidents linked to fentanyl are experiencing a particularly sharp increase — up 304 percent since 2007 — according to an analysis by Alcohol.org, a website for information on alcohol abuse.
Fentanyl accidents had the largest spike, however, the report also found steep rises in accidents linked to a range of other substances over the past decade. Traffic fatalities linked to the painkiller oxycodone rose by 134 percent over the same period.
Opioid overdoses made up a staggering 66 percent of all drug-overdose deaths in 2016, claiming roughly 42,249 lives, according to data released in December 2017 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overall, drug overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under age 50, killing more than 64,000 people in 2016.
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