buncombe Archives - Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina

Read the original article on the North Carolina Health News website.

Supplies, such as the medications naloxone and buprenorphine, carried by Buncombe County community paramedics on the post-overdose response team. Credit: Courtesy of Justin Hall

By Rachel Crumpler

A life lost in Buncombe County in 2022 still weighs on — and motivates — Shuchin Shukla, a family physician who specializes in addiction medicine.

A community paramedic had responded to an overdose involving a person recently released from jail. After reviving them, the paramedic told the patient about a soon-to-launch program that would start people on a medication used to treat opioid addiction after an overdose.

“That would be amazing if you had it now, I would like to start now,” the patient said, according to a shift note of the encounter.

But the program was still 10 days from launch.

Soon after, the person used again, experienced a second overdose and went into cardiac arrest. They later died at the hospital.

“For the team working on this, the case hit home that every moment of every day matters for patients. At any minute, they’re at risk of dying or having an overdose,” Shukla said. “That’s how critical this is.”

For months, Shukla had been working with Buncombe County Emergency Medical Services to launch Buncombe Bridge to Care, a project to equip paramedics to administer buprenorphine — a medication proven to ease opioid withdrawal symptoms, reduce cravings and support long-term recovery for people with opioid use disorder — when responding to overdoses or others in the community struggling with addiction.

Read the original article on the Asheville Watchdog website.

Authorities mistook man with same last name as supplier, but never followed up after their error

A Candler woman’s overdose death three years ago led investigators to a North Carolina dealer peddling illegal drugs through the mail to addicts nationwide.

Rachel Scillitani, 29, died of a fentanyl overdose in her Candler apartment in May 2021. Seven months later, Danny Birch Jr, of Dubuque, Iowa, was dead of drugs from the same supplier suspected in Scillitani’s death. // Photos provided by the Scillitani and Birch families

But the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office investigated the wrong man and failed to pursue leads that could have put James Adam Earwood out of business, according to federal court testimony. Seven months later, in December 2021, an Iowa man died from fentanyl and heroin he bought from Earwood, who boasted of his “first confirmed kill” as evidence of his drugs’ potency.

Earwood of Rutherfordton had been identified as a likely supplier of the fentanyl that killed Rachel Scillitani, 29, in her Candler apartment in May 2021. But Buncombe sheriff’s detectives interviewed and cleared another man with the same last name, Special Agent Bryce Husak of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service testified at an April federal court hearing.

“It is your testimony today that they were actually investigating the wrong Adam Earwood?” a prosecutor asked.

“Correct,” Husak responded.

There was no follow-up investigation of the right Earwood or effort to determine his whereabouts around the time Scillitani bought the fentanyl and died, nor were records on a payment app she used to buy drugs subpoenaed, the agent testified.