On Wednesday afternoon Moore County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the Skymart fuel station in Cameron reference a “CPR in progress” call, stemming from an overdose.

Detective Sergeants Holder and Guerra, immediately responded and arrived to see bystanders performing CPR on a 31 year old Lee County female. According to the victim’s boyfriend, the female had just “shot up with heroin.”

Defaulting to their training, Detectives Holder and Guerra sprang into action and Detective Guerra immediately administered a Narcan injection. The Narcan instantly reversed the victim’s symptoms granting the female a new lease on life.

    

Narcan is the brand name of the medical drug Naloxone, which essentially serves as an antidote to an opioid overdose. When someone takes too much of an opioid (Heroin), their breathing slows down and can stop completely. Narcan blocks the effects of opioids and reverses overdose symptoms. It works on overdoses of heroin and prescription painkillers such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and morphine.

Recently all Moore County Sheriff’s Deputies and Detention Officers received training on Naloxone, which included: overdose signs, symptoms, the legal aspects of administering the life-saving drug and Narcan’s benefits in combating the opioid epidemic.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than half a million people died from drug overdoses between 2000 and 2016.
In 2016, medication and drug overdoses claimed more than 1,200 lives in North Carolina, up from just 300 per year around the turn of the millennium. No other cause of death has skyrocketed as sharply. To put the increase in perspective, there are now more than twice as many annual deaths from drug overdoses than murders in North Carolina.

“I love my job for many reasons and one of those is that each day, I am privileged to work alongside heroes such as Detectives Anthony Guerra and Brock Holder” Sheriff Neil Godfrey said. “We implemented the Narcan program this year for this exact reason; a matter of life and death. Our intent is to reduce the time between the opioid overdose symptoms and effective intervention. We continue to move in a direction ensuring we provide the best possible service to our citizens.”