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Pharmacist helps save mother overdosing on heroin in grocery store bathroom, police say

SNELLVILLE, Ga. — A mother was found passed out in a grocery store bathroom after police say she overdosed on heroin.

Jessica Widner, 28, was found Tuesday with a needle in her arm on the bathroom floor of a Kroger in Snellville, Georgia, about 32 miles east of Atlanta.

Police bodycam video shows the woman on the floor, unconscious.

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A pharmacist used one dose of Narcan. An officer gave her a second dose before she was revived.

The first thing the woman asked for when she regained consciousness was her 18-month-old son.

“Where’s my baby? I need to find my baby,” Widner can be heard saying in the video.

The baby was OK. Kroger employees said they heard the baby crying and that led them to the bathroom.

“The child was in the car seat that was in the buggy with her purse right there with all needles that were right there in her purse,” Snellville Police Sgt. Phillip Poole said.

Widner was taken to jail and charged with child cruelty. Her baby was taken to the hospital and then put in the custody of the Division of Family and Children Services.

“Unfortunately, a lot of these drug uses take place in the stores and bathrooms, I guess because when people go and buy the drugs they go the quickest location they can find,” Poole said.

Police said this is the most recent example of the growing heroin problem in the suburbs.

A February 2017 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found heroin caused more overdose deaths that any other drug and the number of heroin-related deaths in 2015 tripled the number in 1999.

In Widner’s case, the quick actions of pharmacy workers and police helped save a woman’s life and likely that of her baby.