Officials wrote on Facebook: “We feel it necessary to show the other side of this awful drug”.
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According to a release from the East Liverpool Police Department, Acord and Pasek are facing several charges. Police charged Acord with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, endangering a child, and stopping in a roadway.
SEPTEMBER 9-In an effort to highlight the heroin epidemic gripping the country, an OH police department has released photos showing an overdosed couple sitting in a vehicle while the unconscious passenger’s four-year-old son looked on from the back seat.
Allen said authorities in East Liverpool, a city of 11,000 residents, are dealing with heroin-related cases on a daily basis.
The photos immediately drew outrage from social media users, many of whom objected to the fact that the boy’s face was not blurred, and that his mother’s name was posted, thus allowing him to be identified.
In the police report, found below, the parents are identified as 50-year-old Rhonda L. Pasek and 47-year-old James Lee Accord. Many posters said they believed police were doing the right thing by highlighting the problem.
According to the police report, Officer Kevin Thompson stopped the auto after witnessing the driver swerve erratically across the lane.
The couple regained consciousness and were transported to East Liverpool City Hospital for evaluation.
The boy turned out to be Pasek’s 4-year-old son. Pasek is charged with endangering a child, public intoxication and not wearing a seat belt. First responders revived them with an anti-overdose drug and police took care of the child, who is now in the care of a neighbor. “This child can’t speak for himself but we are hopeful his story can convince another user to think twice about injecting this poison while having a child in their custody”, the city wrote on Facebook, along with two photos of the unconscious couple and the alert boy.
James Acord, the man pictured in the photo, was driving his auto behind a school bus in East Liverpool, in the USA state of OH, when his vehicle began drifting across the lanes.
The boy in the vehicle, identified as Ms. Pasek’s 4-year-old son, was taken into custody by Columbiana County Children’s Services.
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In August, The Ohio Department of Health reported that 3,050 people were killed from drug overdoses in Ohio in 205, or eight people a day.
