Potentially deadly drugs are making the rounds among students at a Loudoun County, Virginia, high school, and at least nine students have overdosed on pills suspected of containing fentanyl over the last few weeks.
On Wednesday, the sheriff's office said a ninth Park View High School student overdosed off campus Tuesday night.
Celia Linares says her son is one of the nine Park View students who have overdosed. She told our news partners at Telemundo 44 that the overdose nearly killed him.
"He didn't have a pulse when they took him to the hospital," Linares said in Spanish. "I was very worried."
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Deputies are staking out the school, and the investigation into the source of the pills has intensified. Loudoun County's sheriff wants parents and kids to know these potentially deadly pills are disguised to look like prescription drugs. Those pills are suspected of containing fentanyl, the incredibly potent opioid the DEA says is causing a spike in overdose deaths nationwide.
"They look just like Percocet pills," Sheriff Mike Chapman said. "They look like pharmaceutical-grade pills and they're not."
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In a search warrant affidavit filed Oct. 24, a detective said a recent overdose victim in school "met [with another student] in the school bathroom to purchase the pills, the day before he overdosed" Oct. 17.
While it's unclear if that student was the first Park View victim, at least two weeks passed before the school system notified parents, and by then, more students had overdosed.
"Why was there a delay until Oct. 31 in letting the community know?" Loudoun County School Board member Tiffany Polifko asked.
Polifko says the delay in notifying families cost parents precious time.
"Let parents know exactly what happened so they can have these very real and necessary conversations with their children," she said.
Officials are urging parents to have those conversations immediately to prevent the near-fatal overdose that Linares' son experienced.
"He is getting better, but he's still in bad shape," Linares said in Spanish. "I've had to take him to the hospital twice since because he's felt ill."
The Loudoun County sheriff says there have been 19 juvenile overdoses related to fentanyl in the county so far this year, which matches the same number for all of last year.
