Earlier this month, a 13-year-old boy fell unconscious in his Connecticut classroom and died days later of a fentanyl overdose. Now, police have found approximately 100 bags of the powerful synthetic opioid in the boy’s bedroom.
According to CBS News, authorities, including the Hartford Police Department, are now investigating how the teen came into possession of the drug. Designed as a painkiller for use in surgical settings, fentanyl is 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine and is often fatal when mixed in street drugs such as heroin.
After the boy and two other students who reported dizziness were rushed from the Sports and Medical Science Academy in Hartford to receive medical care, drug tests confirmed that fentanyl was located near the students. Police believe all three came in contact with the substance around the same time.
During a search of the school – which was put on lockdown – investigators said drug detecting canines found 40 bags of fentanyl on campus. Students were dismissed after the lockdown ended and no other injuries were reported.
While the 13-year-old boy died two days after the incident, the other students recovered and were later released from the hospital.
With a search warrant, police searched the boy’s bedroom to find the additional 100 bags.
“The drugs were packaged in the same manner with the same identifying stamp as the bags found at the school,” said CBS News.
Law enforcement gave the bags to the Drug Enforcement Agency, which determined the drugs had an “extremely high purity level,” of 58 to 60 percent. Hartford police sergeant Chris Mastroianni said a bag of fentanyl normally tests around 2 percent pure.
“It was about 50 times stronger than an already very strong bag of fentanyl,” he said during a Tuesday town hall meeting.
Authorities are confident the fentanyl found in the teen’s bedroom caused the overdose. According to CBS News, they do not have evidence that anyone other than the boy brought bags of this fentanyl to the school.
Police also said the teen’s mother has been fully cooperative with the investigation and there is no evidence to suggest she was aware her son was in possession of the fentanyl.
Now, the bags of fentanyl are expected to undergo further testing, including fingerprint and DNA testing, with the aim of determining who gave the teenager the drugs. A person of interest, who has a history with narcotics and the house where the drugs were found, has already been identified by police. However, the person of interest is not a suspect at this time.
Hartford Public Schools Superintendent Leslie Torres called the death a “tragic loss,” and emphasized the importance of opioid awareness and prevention.
Torres said Tuesday that Naloxone will soon be available at the school and that school employees are completing training on how to use the medicine. Naloxone acts within minutes to completely eliminate all signs of opioid intoxication and reverse overdoses.
“We're going to continue to support one another, not only through this tragedy but also to get the information that we all need so that we can be a source of support and empowerment for our youth,” Torres said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. from April 2020 to April 2021, a nearly 30 percent increase over the same time the year before. From June 2020 to June 2021, more than 62,000 drug overdoses were associated with synthetic opioids, a category that includes fentanyl.
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