With a deadly batch of heroin threatening residents in Pelham, New Hampshire, police are going above and beyond their usual protocol to warn the community.
Students at Pelham High School and their parents got an emergency email from police warning them Tuesday about one of the most powerful batches of heroin the community has ever seen.
Pelham mom Donata Kirk was alarmed when she read her email Tuesday afternoon.
“Please share this info with your family and friends,” she read aloud to necn.
A press release typically intended for the media, sent to parents and students about a deadly batch of heroin.
“It is a scary thing as a parent raising children in this day and age, especially when you get things like that where it hits so close to home,” Kirk said.
Police say there have been two overdoses since Sunday and two deaths in just the last week. The heroin on the streets in Pelham right now is proving more powerful than ever before.
Local
“What we’re finding is they are putting this into their system and it is immediately shutting them down,” said Pelham Police Lt. Anne Perriello. “So they don’t even have a chance to say, ‘something is wrong, I need to call 911.’”
The laced heroin is so dangerous, Lt. Perriello decided that high school students and their parents needed a warning. So she forward the press release to Pelham Superintendent Amanda Lecaroz.
“I didn’t even question whether we were going to send it out, of course we would send it out,” Lecaroz told necn Tuesday.
Lecaroz wasted no time, using the school’s emergency alert system to reach as many people as possible.
“We have an all staff, student, community list which is 2,333 emails,” Lecaroz explained. “That’s what went out today.”
While the school district works closely with law enforcement on several drug prevention programs including DARE, Lecaroz says Tuesday’s email chain was a first.
“If we can just save one person as a result of that message it is worth sending,” she said.
Kirk tells us the email definitely had an impact by reigniting an important conversation with her two kids about drugs.
Lt. Perriello expects the heroin is laced with fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. She says her first priority right now is finding the source and getting it off the streets.
Anything with information in the case is asked to contact Pelham Police.
