The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office is warning parents after a Creekside High student ended up in the hospital after smoking marijuana laced with what's believed to be synthetic fentanyl.
The girl’s mother says it took only one bad choice for this to happen — and she has a warning for other parents.
Deputies say the teen met a friend who had the marijuana at Mills Field on Race Track Road.
The drug — a combination of pot and fentanyl — may have caused the teen to black out and be left for dead in a nearby Julington Creek neighborhood.
Marcia Mazzoni, the girl’s mother, is heartbroken.
"[I] didn't even know if she was going to be alive when I got there," Mazzoni said.
According to the St. Johns County Sheriffs Office, Mazzoni's daughter and a friend left orientation at Creekside High on Aug. 9. After that, they met an adult male at Mills Park and took two hits of marijuana.
“She said throat and chest started burning like it was on fire,” Mazzoni said.
Her friend thought she was merely dehydrated, so they took her to a nearby store to buy Gatorade.
It wasn’t long before her daughter was blacking out and vomiting, her mother said.
Mazzoni says her daughter was driven back down Race Track road to the woods on Butterfly Branch Circle where kids often hang out. She was left to fend for herself, half-passed out and still throwing up, her mother said.
"I don't know if she had a guardian angel," Mazzino said, "[But she was] able to text a friend [that was able to determine] she needed help."
Mazzoni's daughter was taken to the hospital, where she received Narcan to treat the apparent overdose.
The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office says that St. Johns County Fire Rescue has administered more than 400 Narcan treatments in a year. Overdoses now surpass car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death in the United States.
Mazzoni has this message for other parents:
"It's in our communities," Mazzoni said. "I feel like I'm living a Lifetime movie. Always happens to someone else, but it's happening here."
The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office says there haven’t been any arrests at this time, but they will be filing charges for a warrant on one individual with the State Attorney’s Office.
Cox Media Group
