Tulsa County Deputy Saves Life With New Emergency Medication

Deputies have a new tool to fight overdoses. The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office is now equipping patrol cars with an emergency drug called Narcan; and one deputy has already saved a life.

The sheriff's office has had the kits for a couple of weeks, but on Tuesday, Deputy David Allen's training kicked in when he arrived at a home where someone was passed out on prescription drugs.

"I thought it was too late, but when I got closer and tried whether or not she was breathing, I saw that she breathed in a little bit, real shallow and real faint. I got this Narcan in and administered it and it was almost immediate," Allen said.

Dispatchers called Allen and his partner to a home near Turley about someone who overdosed on prescription medication. When he saw the woman on her back he went to his patrol car and grabbed a yellow bag with two vials of the opiate inhibitor Narcan.

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The Narcan is loaded into a syringe and sprayed into the nose. If there's no change within a few minutes, a second dose can be given.

Allen didn't expect the woman to respond to the emergency medication so quickly.

"When she came to it was like waking the dead. I thought I would give it to her, start CPR on her, eventually she would roll around, but it was almost instant, one or two seconds and she started breathing real deep and that was a nice sigh of relief on my part," he said.

The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office said Allen is the first deputy to save someone's life with Narcan; he said he was just doing his job.

"It's like anything else, they give you a new tool and you want to go use it, I'm glad we were able to save a life with it," said Allen.

EMSA crews carry Narcan, but medics can't always rush into a potentially dangerous situation.

"So what we're trying to do with this is bridge the time gap," Allen said.

The Narcan kits are now in every patrol unit.

"If you know to use it and if you know you have it, nothing else would work but this," Allen said.

Deputies had to go through a four hour training course.

The Narcan will only work on people who are experiencing a drug overdose from heroin or a prescription drug like Oxycontin.