Cabarrus Co. officials see 600 percent increase in heroin overdoses

By Allison Latos

CABARRUS COUNTY, N.C. — Police and first responders are sending out an urgent warning about a powerful and deadly form of heroin.

It's called China white.

Channel 9 first reported on it a year and a half ago, when undercover Cabarrus County deputies allowed cameras along as they investigated their first cases.

Now, they said it's taken over.

When Sylvia Baucom looks at childhood pictures of her daughter, Melody, she sees a little baby girl.

But her last memory of her daughter is a tragic one.

On Oct. 10, everything changed.

"Her daughter said, 'Mom has been in the bathroom for a long time and I can't get her to open the door,'" Baucom said.

  • CLICK PLAY: Sylvia Baucom talks about seeing her daughter covered by a sheet

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Baucom found Melody, 33, a mother of three, on the bathroom floor. She wasn't breathing.

"There were needles all over the floor," Baucom said.

Melody had overdosed on China white heroin.

Baucom thought she had beaten that addiction.

<strong>"I was thinking, 'I thought you had quit this.' I thought this was over," Baucom said. "It is tough watching your daughter go out the front door with a sheet over her."</strong>

That pain is a glimpse into an urgent and serious china white heroin problem across our area.

  • CLICK PLAY: Sylvia Baucom on her daughter's death

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Cabarrus County EMS Lt. Jonathan Maulden showed Eyewitness News startling statistics.

In October, EMS crews rushed to 49 China white heroin overdoses in Cabarrus County, a 600 percent increase.

"We went from an average of about seven overdoses a month to two or three a day," Maulden said.

Much of the China white heroin being sold and used in Cabarrus County is laced with acetyl fentanyl, a painkiller 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin alone.

Users aiming to achieve a stronger high stop breathing the second they inject it.

"A lot of the people we're waking up still have needles sticking in them," Maulden said.

  • CLICK PLAY: Lt. Jonathan Maulden on finding people who have overdosed

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Maulden said users inject China white as soon as they buy it. So, police and EMS often respond to overdoses in public places like gas stations or business parking lots.

In the past two months, medics saved all but two overdose victims by giving them a medicine called Narcan.

Medics spray it up a patient's nose to help re-start the respiratory system.

"Without this drug there is no way for them to breathe on their own," Maulden said.

For Melody, it was too late.

In the days after her death, her mother found a poem.

Melody's own words were an eerie description of her addiction.

"Needles and pills fuel me. Where do I go without the rush? Who am I but a little girl crushed?" she wrote.

Now Baucom visits Melody's grave, hoping her death might encourage other addicts to seek help.

HOW TO SEEK HELP:

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