Someone selling a new batch of heroin likely laced with fentanyl has caused another spike in Akron overdoses and deaths that began Thursday.
The Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office is investigating eight possible overdose deaths — two Friday and six Saturday.
More than two-dozen others have survived overdoses since Friday afternoon, including a man who crashed his truck behind the defunct Macy’s store at Chapel Hill Mall, catching himself on fire, police told Beacon Journal news partner WEWS.
The man, seriously burned, survived. So did three others who overdosed at a home on Concord Avenue off South Arlington Street in southeast Akron, leaving a 3-year-old child to wander a street away.
As the Akron Fire Department revived the three people, police searched for the toddler, finding the child in the backyard of a neighbor’s home, the fire department said.
After medics and police finished their work, a fourth person showed up at the same Concord Avenue home and overdosed.
The fire department said medics revived that person, too.
Suspected overdoses, meanwhile, continued with police and medics responding to restaurant drive-thrus, sidewalks and homes throughout the city.