For the second time in less than three weeks, a person who overdosed on heroin at the Price Chopper grocery store in Morristown had to be revived, and was later arrested.
On Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 10:59 p.m., Morristown police were called to a possible overdose at the store. Officers found Emily Lang, 23, of Morristown collapsed on the floor, not breathing. Officers performed CPR and managed to revive Lang with the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, also known as Narcan. She was transported to Copley Hospital for further evaluation.
A week later, police charged her with misdemeanor heroin possession.
According to Morristown Police Chief Richard Keith, officers had only recently completed their training in how to administer the opioid-blocking drug; every officer in the department is now certified.
“It was a rescue call; we often jump on those and we got there first,” Keith said. “If it’s an unknown, we use Narcan. If it works, it was an opioid overdose. If it doesn’t, no harm done.”
On Sept. 2, Jessica Cantwell, 20, of Morrisville also overdosed in Price Chopper and had to be revived with naloxone, this time by Morristown EMS. Cantwell was later arrested, charged with violating court-ordered conditions of release.
Cantwell made headlines in March when she was in a head-on collision that landed her in the hospital for several weeks. Police found traces of heroin and other drugs in her system and charged her with felony negligent driving and misdemeanor heroin possession. The driver of the other car, Stowe Town Clerk Alison Kaiser, is still out of work, having suffered a severe concussion during the crash.
Cantwell also faces heroin possession charges in Orleans County court from an earlier incident.
Naloxone works quickly, as Morristown Police Officer Jason Luneau noted in his affidavit.
“Within 10 minutes, Cantwell went from being dead, lying on the floor in Price Chopper, to alert and talking to EMS workers as she was being packaged inside the back of the ambulance,” he wrote.
The woman Cantwell was with that night, Ashley Miller, 22, of Morrisville, was also arrested, but hadn’t yet been arraigned as of press time. Miller was charged with heroin distribution and child cruelty; she allegedly had her 4-year-old daughter in the car with her and Cantwell.
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