Terrifying moment Florida deputy exposed to fentanyl collapses in bodycam footage before he is saved by Narcan

A Florida police officer’s body camera captured the moment he saved another deputy from exposure to fentanyl – during a routine traffic stop which saw the officer collapse after administering a blood test on-site substance testing.

Identified as Flagler County Sheriff’s Deputy Nick Huzior, the lawman is now recovering – thanks in part to his fellow officer’s quick thinking.

The incident happened around 3:45 p.m. Thursday, after Huzior arrested George Clemons, 61, for fleeing a hit-and-run scene near Bunnell and taking off on State Highway 11, prompting several near misses. crashes in the process.

Now out on bail despite a series of drunk driving and drug charges, Clemons finally pulled over – at which point cops encountered him still sitting in the red SUV, in the driver’s seat, with his keys out of the ignition and under his legs.

Huzior and other deputies immediately spotted a slew of narcotics, along with an empty Bud Light can and a mini liquor bottle in plain sight, cops said.

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Identified as Flagler County Sheriff’s Deputy Nick Huzior, the lawman is now recovering – thanks in part to his fellow officer’s quick thinking

The incident happened around 3:45 p.m. Thursday, after Huzior arrested George Clemons, 61, for fleeing a hit-and-run scene near Bunnell. Now facing a litany of DUI and drug charges, Clemons is currently out on $24,500 bail, records show.

The footage released by the sheriff’s office on Friday begins shortly after Clemons denied Huzior’s request for a sobriety test, prompting him to test one of the drugs – a powdery white substance – on the spot.

Almost instantly, the officer – who was wearing personal protective equipment but still found himself overwhelmed by the drug overdose – is seen succumbing to the synthetic opioid, which is more than 100 times more potent than morphine.

‘I feel dizzy,’ he hears Deputy First Class Kyle Gaddie say in the first-person footage, which shows an array of pills, marijuana and unspecified powder smeared on an already Clemons hood stopped at this point.

“Call the emergency medical services,” adds the officer, out of breath.

Telling Gaddie he feels dizzy, shaking and losing feeling in his arms and legs, the deputy loses his balance – prompting his superior officer to get out of his car, where he had been parked previously for a traffic stop.

Knowing that the narcotics Huzior had tested could contain fentanyl – a deadly synthetic drug now used by pushers to make other drugs more potent – Gaddie dispensed a dose of Narcan, a drug used to reverse the effects of an overdose. of fentanyl.

Despite the precaution, Huzior’s condition persists for several minutes – prompting Gaddie to give his comrade a second dose.

As this happens, Gaddie is seen crouched tightly next to Huzior, while whispering words of encouragement.

At one point, he asks Huzior how he feels – to which the deputy replies that he feels “dizzy”.

“I feel really dizzy,” he said, before finally being taken to a nearby hospital. “My heart is beating very fast.”

The footage begins after Clemons finally comes to a stop at a traffic stop on State Route 11 – at which point cops encounter him sitting in his red SUV. Inside, cops found a slew of drugs, pills, alcohol, and other substances. Clemons was handcuffed for refusing a sobriety test

“I feel really dizzy,” he said in the clip released by his superiors on Friday, before he was finally taken to a nearby hospital, where he was still recovering on Saturday. “My heart is beating very fast”

Fentanyl – about 100 times more potent than morphine – is responsible for around 100,000 deaths each year in the United States, not counting deaths overseas.

Over the past eight years, the opioid has been smuggled into the country in increasing quantities across the southern border – with some 8,400 kilograms of the overdose-causing drug seized in 2022.

During that time, about 325,000 people have died in the United States from overdoses of synthetic opioids like those sold by raided Mexican stores, which experts say are almost always made up of fentanyl.

As well as being far more potent than others on the black market, the drug is mass-produced by Mexican cartels, who manufacture it from precursor chemicals smuggled in from China and then press it into engineered pills. to look like other drugs.

The practice is illegal and has been on the radar of federal authorities for much of the year, statements from the State Department and other US groups have revealed.