Breaking up an altercation between junior high school students is all par for the course when it comes to being a school supervisor. What’s not expected, however, is suffering an accidental overdose after intervening. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened to a school supervisor in California — and the incident should give everyone chills for multiple reasons.
An unnamed school supervisor found themselves in need of emergency services after breaking up an altercation between two students at Chipman Junior High School in Bakersfield, California on a Friday morning. After the incident, the school supervisor reportedly searched at least one of the students, and that’s when things quickly went from bad to downright deadly.
Shockingly, one of the students involved in the altercation — a boy just 13 years old — was discovered to have nearly 150 fentanyl pills disguised as Percocet (oxycodone). Making matters worse, the school supervisor who conducted the search suffered an “inhalation” exposure overdose as a result of coming in contact with the pills while opening and checking the student’s bag.
According to The Blaze, the Bakersfield police were called to Chipman Junior High School just after 9 am after the campus supervisor suffered the accidental overdose due to fentanyl’s notorious “inhalation hazard.” To be clear, the school supervisor did not ingest any of the pills. Instead, just the simple act of opening the container of pills itself exposed the employee to an “inhalation hazard,” according to KGET 17.
After it became clear that the school supervisor was subsequently suffering a contact overdose, a local high school police officer immediately gave the employee Narcan, also known as naloxone, a life-saving drug often administered to offset the effects of opioid overdose. The employee, whose name and gender are unknown, was then taken to the hospital for treatment and was reported to be in stable condition.
The unnamed 13-year-old student, who was allegedly found carrying the fentanyl, was also found to have $300 in cash on his person at the time of the incident, police said. He was arrested for possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of sales and taken to a juvenile detention facility pending further investigation into whether he had actually distributed or sold any of the pills and how he acquired them.
Although much was still unknown in the days immediately following the incident, what we do know is chilling enough. A child had a deadly substance at school around other children — a substance so deadly that even smelling it might inadvertently kill you. Sadly, even as dangerous as fentanyl has proven to be, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Instead, it’s becoming a preferred product for drug traffickers to sell.
Although fentanyl has been used as a cutting agent in heroin for years, it’s more recently been “pressed into counterfeit pills” and sold on the street under the guise of being prescription drugs, which has led to an uptick in overdose deaths, Yahoo News reported. “It’s so unstable, very cheap,” an undercover cartel investigator explained. “You can buy a fentanyl pill for three to five dollars on the street, and in that one pill for three to five dollars, you can be dead.” Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones echoed similar sentiments, saying, “Accidental overdoses are almost exclusively fentanyl now.”
California has become a hotbed for drug trafficking. As The Blaze explained, “Law enforcement agents speculate that, because of the state’s lax drug laws and its intricate interstate highway matrix, drug cartels have set up shop in many locations throughout the state so that they may manufacture their wares and then distribute them throughout the country. Fentanyl has lately become their preferred product to sell.” And, apparently, kids are not off limits when it comes to drug cartels and traffickers, so parents, teachers, law enforcement, and children need to beware.
