With a child in the back seat, a woman was slumped against the side of a vehicle while a man paced in circles in what police described as a horrifying drug overdose scene outside a Whiteland truck stop.
No one was arrested, but both the man and woman were taken to the hospital for treatment, and state welfare workers were called to take the child.
Just before 9 p.m. Wednesday, police were called to a truck stop on Whiteland Road, near Interstate 65, where bystanders had reported a man and woman were possibly overdosing, according to the Whiteland Police Department report.
Officers found a woman sitting on the ground, leaning against a vehicle parked at a fuel pump. A bystander was waving his arms and pointing to a man lying on the ground. When officers got to the man, his eyes were rolled back in his head and his breathing was shallow, according to the report.
An officer forcefully rubbed the 31-year-old man’s sternum to try to get him to wake up, when the man suddenly got up and tried to run. The officer put the man on the ground, where he began convulsing, the report said.
Police then noticed a child seat in the back seat of the vehicle and tried asking the 23-year-old woman if they had a child with them and where the child was, but the woman didn’t know and didn’t seem concerned, the report said.
Officers learned that a bystander had seen what was happening and took the child out of the car seat and into the nearby gas station, to get her away from the incident outside, the report said. They learned the child did not belong to the couple, and they had been babysitting her for a friend while he was at work. They called the Indiana Department of Child Services, and a caseworker took the child, the report said.
Before taking the man and woman to the hospital, emergency workers had to give the man a dose of Narcan, which is meant to stop a drug overdose, the report said.
Once at Johnson Memorial Hospital, the man told police he had been clean from heroin for two months before snorting the drug in the vehicle. He didn’t remember anything after that point, the report said. He told police he didn’t know if the woman had used heroin that day, the report said.
The woman told police she had smoked spice, a synthetic marijuana, the report said. She cried and told police she had made a mistake by using drugs while watching the little girl, the report said.
The father of the child was called and told police the man and woman were not supposed to leave his home while they were watching the child. The state department of child services took the little girl, and the father would be attending a meeting before getting her back, the report said.
No one was arrested. The report is being sent to the Johnson County Prosecutor, who will decide what, if any, charges to file.
