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| Heroin: The human toll |
| By chicagotribune.com - Christy Gutowski, Gregory Pratt and Matthew Walberg |
| Published: 09/24/2013 |
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Johnny Dudek had piercing blue eyes, swooping bangs and a perfect grin — thanks to the braces that came off not long ago. Soon to turn 16, he was excited about getting the white Grand Am his grandmother left him before she died, though his parents said he needed to improve his grades before he could get a driver's license. His mother caught him smoking marijuana a year earlier. Still, Ruth Dudek said she never imagined the boy she called her "love bug" would use heroin. On July 10, his family found Johnny unresponsive in his bedroom in their Bartlett home. His father tried to resuscitate him, but he was cold to the touch, and Ruth Dudek knew her baby was gone. She said his inexperience with the drug, combined with seasonal allergies, proved fatal, and he stopped breathing in his sleep. The high school sophomore-to-be was one of 11 people who died of a heroin overdose in DuPage County during a two-and-a-half-week period this summer. Chicago's suburbs have been witness to a growing toll of heroin-related fatalities, with DuPage, Kane, Lake, Will and McHenry counties seeing year-over-year increases in 2012. But the abrupt spike in July in DuPage — accounting for more than a quarter of the county's 2013 total to date of 38 — was particularly alarming in part because it cannot be fully explained. Read More. |
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