Crime & Safety
Heroin Heroes: Lemont Police & Fire Personnel Save Overdosing Downers Grove Man's Life With Newly Issued Drug
The police started carrying a drug to reverse heroin overdoses less than two weeks before it was used to likely save a life.
An overdosing Downers Grove man was tracked down by Lemont police and fire personnel who likely saved his life Wednesday night.
A police officer gave the 31-year-old man two doses of Narcan, a drug that reverses opioid overdose.
Lemont police Cmdr. Greg Smith said the man "probably would have died" if not for the treatment with Narcan, a drug officers only recently were trained to use and started carrying less than two weeks ago.
Police and firefighters were alerted to an 8:45 p.m. Tuesday call for help from a woman who said her boyfriend was having a heart attack, Smith said. The 29-year-old woman was not sure where she and her boyfriend were, Smith said, but believed they were near Main Street.
It turned out she was not near Main Street. Police and fire personnel determined she and her boyfriend were around the quarries and searched through the "desolate" area, Smith said.
When they found the couple, they saw the man was not having a heart attack after all, Smith said, but actually was in the midst of a heroin overdose.
A battalion fire chief, paramedic and police officer happened upon the overdosing man, Smith said, and the officer administered two doses of Narcan in a nasal mist.
The man was then taken to Adventist Bolingbrook Hospital.
Smith declined to identify the police officer who employed the Narcan mist, calling his work part of a "team effort."
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