Dramatic Video Shows Police Officer Collapsing After Alleged Fentanyl Exposure

Dramatic body cam footage shows a South Carolina police officer collapsing after she was allegedly exposed to fentanyl.

The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office released the footage this week and said that one of its deputies received doses of Narcan.

The incident happened on Saturday when police received a call about a woman passed out behind the wheel of an SUV in Bonneau, South Carolina. Deputies got into the locked vehicle and woke the woman, who claimed she pulled over after nearly hitting a deer. She was unable to explain why she was asleep.

WCSC reported that one deputy reported finding a clear plastic bag with “an unknown substance”:

A female deputy then searched the woman’s person and the report states the deputy found a clear plastic bag that contained an unknown substance in one side of the driver’s bra and a folded-up dollar bill that also contained an unknown substance in the other side.

In the video, you can hear the deputy ask for Narcan multiple times shortly after touching the bill before she falls to the ground.

Narcan is an over-the-counter medication that can reverse the effects of overdoses.

In the video, the deputy is heard hyperventilating throughout.

After a similar incident involving a San Diego police officer unfolded in 2021, health experts began pushing back against the idea that mere exposure to fentanyl can cause one to overdose.

“The only way to experience intoxification or overdose from fentanyl, or any other opioid,” one professor of pharmacy practice told The Washington Post in 2021, “is to take it intentionally: to inject it, to snort it or to ingest it orally.”