State police save woman from fatally overdosing

FOX 32 NEWS - Two Illinois State Troopers are being credited with saving a woman’s life after she overdosed while driving on the tollway.

It started Sunday night while Trooper Raymond Kurut was on routine patrol on I-294 near 75th Street when he got a call of a possible single vehicle crash. When he stopped to help, he could tell the woman was in bad shape.

“She was going through an overdose at that point,” said Trooper Kurut.

He recognized the symptoms and knew he would need to give the 41-year-old woman the opioid antidote Narcan, which all troopers carry with them.

“Discoloration of her skin, dark blue gray color, her lips her fingernails were purple, very labored breathing, pulse was, I could barely find the pulse, it was extremely weak,” Kurut said.

The driver had slid over to the passenger seat, but a man in the car with her said she had been driving.

“She was in and out of consciousness while she was behind the wheel, and she moved over to the passenger seat where she said she was going to sleep,” Kurut said.

“We injected the Narcan into her her nose and you don't see the response immediately,” said Trooper Matthew Dumais of Illinois State Police.

Dumais actually administered the second of four doses the woman would need to survive.

It's reminiscent of other recent cases in the news of people passed out behind the wheel from heroin overdoses, some even with children in the car with them.

In Sunday's case, troopers say the woman had taken a form of opioid pills. They say she and others on the road are very fortunate.

“It is relieving for someone to respond, sometimes you do what you can and they're not able to, so it is a good feeling,” Dumais said.

“Without a doubt she's alive today because of the Narcan we administered to her,” Kurut said.

The woman was taken to a local hospital and charges against her are now pending.