Arrests Made After Heroin Overdose
Written by Andrew-Rossi on March 26, 2018
Two Park County men were arrested Friday in connection with a heroin overdose near Lovell.
According to an article in the Lovell Chronicle, 20-year-old Austin Kondash of Cody was arrested after one of his friends, 27-year-old Ren Utter, overdosed in a bathroom at a residence west of Lovell.
Sheriff Ken Blackburn told the newspaper that the call came in to the Lovell dispatch center around 8:35p.m., with the caller saying that a friend who was with him had injected heroin, became unconscious, and that others in the vehicle with him were performing CPR as they were transporting him to North Big Horn Hospital. An ambulance responded, but while EMTs were working on the subject, who was later identified as Utter, the two others in the vehicle drove away. Lovell police pulled the vehicle over just a mile or two west of the ambulance.
Upon investigation, law enforcement discovered a quantity of heroin and drug paraphernalia at the residence where the overdose occurred. Subsequently, Kondash was arrested for possession of heroin and transported to the Big Horn County Detention Center in Basin. Utter was later cited for possession of a controlled substance. The third person in the incident was not charged.
Sheriff Blackburn said that the case is still under investigation to discover where the drugs came from, and other charges are still pending. He acknowledged the rarity of a heroin overdose in Big Horn County, but said that law enforcement is seeing an increasing number of cases involving heroin.
