Jun 30, 2015 2 min read

MONONGAHELA – A Carroll Township police officer was the first member of a police department in Washington County to revive a heroin overdose victim with the opiate antidote known as Narcan.

The officer, Mike Fendya, said he was in uniform and happened to be driving in the area where the man suffered the overdose Monday when he heard about it from emergency dispatchers.

“I was right there,” said Fendya, who radioed Washington County 911 for permission to enter the residence in the 700 block of East Main Street in Monongahela, where the 31-year-old Monessen man overdosed.

The rescue came at a time when Washington County District Attorney Eugene Vittone was urging police departments to arm officers with Narcan because the state is experiencing a heroin and prescription drug overdose epidemic. Vittone confirmed Tuesday Fendya was the first police officer to use Narcan in such a situation. Paramedics used the same drug June 24 to revive a heroin overdose in a Washington parking lot in a rescue that was captured by a television news camera.

Fendya said Vittone supplied him with two doses of Narcan June 19, and he completed training in March on how to administer the drug.

Fendya said he performed a quick diagnosis and determined heroin caused Monday’s overdose because the man was barely breathing, had track marks on his arm and had pupils the size of pinpoints. Fendya, who also is a paramedic, said he initially tried to no avail to wake the man by stuffing ice cubes down the front of his pants.

“It works sometimes,” he said.

He said he then sprayed a dose of Narcan in the man’s nose, and the overdose victim was answering his questions in under two minutes.

“Five minutes later, he was fully awake,” Fendya said. “It’s still a human being.”

The man refused further medical treatment, Fendya said.

“He did a good job,” Vittone said. “Hopefully, we’ll have more of them rather than see them go to Mr. Warco, the coroner. That’s good news.”