Carrboro police charge man with selling drugs that caused a fatal overdose in 2022
Police have charged a Carrboro man with providing the drugs that killed another man last year on Lindsay Street.
John Robert Small, 31, was charged Wednesday with three felonies: death by distribution, possession of a Schedule II controlled substance, and maintaining a vehicle for the sell or distribution of a controlled substance. He also was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, Carrboro police said in a news release Thursday.
Small was taken to the Orange County jail, where he was being held on $210,000 secured bail, which requires the defendant to put up money or collateral to be released from custody.
A police investigation into the death of 29-year-old Bradley Zimmerman, who was found dead in a home on Lindsay Street home on July 31, 2022, determined he died of cardiac arrest related to a drug overdose. Small is accused of selling the drugs that cause Zimmerman’s death.
Zimmerman did not live at the home where he died, Carrboro Police Chief Chris Atack said Thursday in an email. He declined to say what other drugs Zimmerman may have taken prior to his death.
The death by distribution charge has only been available to law enforcement since 2019, when N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper signed it into law to fight the skyrocketing rate of opioid-related deaths.
Law enforcement officers have been carrying naloxone — also marketed as Narcan — in their toolkits for much longer.
Carrboro police have used naloxone since 2014 to save 34 overdose victims, including on March 4, Atack said.
He noted that naloxone is most effective when it is administered quickly, however, there are situations when more than one dose is needed, because of the potency of the drug causing the overdose or the amount that the victim has used.
Local and state officials have made it easier for families, friends and other users to step in with help, including the passage of the state’s Good Samaritan Law, which protects people from prosecution if they call 911 to report a possible overdose.
In March, the federal Food and Drug Administration also approved over-the-counter sales of Narcan to make it more readily available to the public.
Last year, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office became one of several counties to distribute free Narcan overdose reversal kits to the public. The kits can be obtained from a vending machine in the lobby of the Orange County Detention Center at 1200 U.S. 70 West in HIllsborough.
Rising deaths, multiple solutions
The state reported a 22% increase in opioid overdose deaths in 2021, compared with 2020. More than 77% of the 4,041 people killed had used fentanyl, sometimes in combination with other illegal drugs, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services reported.
Since 2019, the state has seen 72% more overdose deaths, including a spike of 40% during the 2020 pandemic. White people were still the largest group dying from opioid overdoses, it said, but the highest death rates based on population were reported among Black people, who saw a 139% death rate increase between 2019 and 2021, it said.
American Indians experienced the highest death rate of all racial groups, with a 117% increase based on population over that same period, it said.
In Orange County, more than 90% of the 29 deaths reported in 2021 were unintentional, Health Director Quintana Stewart has said.
The state is attacking the problem from multiple angles, including the distribution of over 719,000 units of naloxone to agencies statewide to support their overdose response, the report said. Other efforts including allowing EMS agencies and mobile medication units to distribute FDA-approved medications, including methadone and buprenorphine, to people being treated for opioid use.
Additional money to combat the problem is now being distributed from a national $26 billion opioid settlement with pharmaceutical companies. North Carolina will receive about $750 million from the settlement, money that is meant to help communities deal with the scourge of opioid addiction and overdoses .
Orange County expects to receive about $6.8 million from the settlement.
