Police: 5 mall employees treated for apparent fentanyl overdose at The Shops at Riverside in Hackensack, N.J.
HACKENSACK, N.J. -- A woman is still in serious condition after five people overdosed at a New Jersey mall.
Police say all five women likely ingested the deadly drug fentanyl, and they are lucky to be alive.
Police described a scary scene and said shoppers found the women unconscious outside the mall, adding those civilians -- and first responders -- saved a lot of lives.
"We're seeing this all over the country. We talk about this is as overdoses. It's more about poisoning," Hackensack Police Director Ray Guidetti said.
A 911 call brought emergency responders on Wednesday evening to the upscale The Shops at Riverside mall in Hackensack, where five women had overdosed, likely on fentanyl, and were found unconscious outside a car in the parking garage.
Cops, firefighters and EMS administered Narcan and performed CPR.
ADDICTION RESOURCES:
- ReachNJ: New Jersey's Addiction Helpline | Call 1-844-732-2465
- New Jersey Counseling & Addiction Services
- New Jersey Addiction Services
- HOPEline: New York's Addiction Helpline | Call 1-877-846-7369 or text 467369
- New York Office of Addiction Services and Supports
Hackensack Police Capt. Michael Antista said all five women were revived, thanks to those life-saving actions.
"Four of the victims were transported to an area hospital, with one victim refusing medical aid on scene," Antista said.
Police say the women may have not even known what they were ingesting at the time.
"A lot of the folks that are victims, they just don't know exactly what they're taking, and it may very well be illicit drugs or it may be something else. And even if it's the illicit drugs, they have no idea they may be taking fentanyl. It's the mass poisioning that we're concerned about," Guidetti said.
He added dealers often use fentanyl to cut with other drugs because it's cheap and powerful.
"If you're the unfortunate one that comes into contact with it because you thought you were taking one thing and it's something else, you can see what the consequences are," Guidetti said.
In New Jersey and across the United States, fentanyl is detected in the vast majority of fatal overdoses.
Watch Nick Caloway's report
David Gerber is a long-time addiction specialist and the founder of Sober at Home, an online substance abuse treatment center.
"These five people were very lucky," Gerber said.
He said while Narcan is the first line of defense in preventing people from dying of an overdose, more steps must follow.
"Are people being connected with treatment? My biggest fear is that we say, 'Narcan saves lives,' and it does, but that's not enough. We need to look at what happens after Narcan," he said.
Experts say fentanyl is cheaper to make and several times more powerful than heroin.
"So drug cartels and drug dealers want fentanyl in our supply," Gerber said.
Timothy McMahon, from the New Jersey Division of the DEA, says the synthetic drug is behind a vast majority of overdoses.
"Fake pills that contain fentanyl that we send to the lab for analysis, 6 out of 10 contain a potential fatal dose," he said.
According to state records from the medical examiner's office, fentanyl was found in just 42 of the more than 1,200 drug overdose deaths in 2012. Fast forward to the most recent data available from 2019, 75% of drug deaths in the state were caused by fentanyl -- found in the bodies of nearly 2,300 people.
"Educate people in New Jersey not to put anything that does not come labeled from your doctor or your pharmacist into your body," Gerber said.
Watch John Dias' report
Counselors from Greater Essex Counseling Services ay they've seen an increase.
"It truly is a crisis, and I see these numbers going to be increasing over and over," co-owner Chris Vadas said.
"If you have a product where 10 people died on it, that's street cred. People now want your drug because it's a better high than the person on the next corner," certified alcohol and drug counselor Nicole Guarducci said.
Earlier this month, the New Jersey Department of Health announced an initiative to target overdose hotspots, prioritizing locations for outreach where racial disparities in overdoses are the highest.
Sources say all five women worked at a restaurant inside the mall. One of them is still in the hospital in serious but stable condition.
Police are investigating how they got the drugs, adding a test will be done to confirm that fentanyl was involved.