About 100 bags of fentanyl were found in the bedroom of a 13-year-old boy who died from alleged exposure to fentanyl at his school.
Forty bags of fentanyl were also removed from students’ schools, according to police. According to a press release from the Hartford Police Department, both sets of bags were packaged the same way and marked with a similar stamp.
The teenager died on January 15, two days after he was found unconscious following an alleged fentanyl exposure at the Academy of Health and Sports Sciences.
Two other boys, also 7th graders, who were exposed to fentanyl at the same time were taken to hospital and later released, police said.
“We can say with confidence that fentanyl caused the overdose [of the juvenile] is the same fentanyl that was placed in a minor’s bedroom,” Hartford Police said in a statement.
Lieutenant Aaron Boisvert, Hartford police, said the bags were initially collected by the Drug Enforcement Administration and delivered to Hartford police for fingerprint and DNA testing.
Police found no evidence that anyone other than the child brought drugs to school, he added. Officials are still investigating how he got hold of the fentanyl.
Authorities have no suspects at this time, Boisvert told CNN.
The teen’s mother is cooperating with authorities, who have found no evidence that she knew in advance of her son’s fentanyl possession, the statement said.
According to the statement, the 13-year-old boy has no history of drug use.
The pandemic may have made America’s drug epidemic worse
The drug epidemic has grown in tandem with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed about 509,000 people during the same period.
The increased use of synthetic drugs had attracted the attention of experts before Covid-19 hit, but the pandemic may have exacerbated the problem, Volkow said.
With restrictions on international travel, synthetics that are easier to produce and more concentrated are also smuggled more efficiently, she added.
CNN’s Kiely Westhoff and Amanda Watts contributed to this report.