Pharmacist helps save mother overdosing on heroin, police say

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A mother was found passed out in a grocery store bathroom after police say she overdosed on heroin.

Jessica Widner, 28, was found Tuesday with a needle in her arm on the bathroom floor of the Kroger on Scenic Highway in Snellville.

Police body cam video shows the woman on the floor unconscious.

A pharmacist used one dose of Narcan and an officer would give her a second dose before she was revived.

The first thing the woman asked for when she came back was her 18-month-old son.

“Where’s my baby? I need to find my baby,” Widner says in the video.

The baby was OK and maybe saved his mother’s life. Kroger employees said they heard the baby crying and that led them to the bathroom.

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“The child was in the car seat that was in the buggy with her purse right there with all needles that were right there in her purse,” Snellville Police Sgt. Phillip Poole said.

Widner was taken to jail and charged with child cruelty. Her baby was taken to the hospital and then put in DFACS custody.

“Unfortunately, a lot of these drug uses take place in the stores and bathrooms I guess because when people go and buy the drugs they go the quickest location they can find,” Poole said.

Police said this is the most recent example in a growing heroin problem in the suburbs.

A recent CDC study found heroin caused more overdose deaths that any other drug and the number of heroin-related deaths in 2015 tripled that of 1999.

In this case, the quick actions of pharmacy workers and police helped save a woman’s life and likely her baby’s.

Cox Media Group