TWO DEAD, 13 SAVED: JUST A QUIET NIGHT ON THE STREETS

By ambulance service standards it wasn't a busy night. Only two dead, from
15 suspected or confirmed heroin overdoses between 5pm Friday and dawn
yesterday, rates as a relatively calm night these days.

On the worst nights, ambulance officers have treated up to 50 drug overdose
patients as the heroin epidemic spreads across Melbourne.

The first overdose call on Friday came just eight minutes after the end of
the working week. An ambulance was dispatched to a toilet block near the
corner of Exeter Road and the Maroondah Highway in Croydon North at 5.08pm,
where a young women had collapsed in a public toilet. She was resuscitated
with Narcan, the powerful stimulant that reverses the effects of heroin.

Across town and 11 minutes later, ambulance officers were reviving another
overdose victim in Coronation Street, Footscray West.

About an hour after the Footscray West call, the ambulance service had its
third overdose call for the night. A young man unconscious under a bridge
in Foster Street, Dandenong, was revived with Narcan.

At 6.23pm, a minute after the Foster Street call, an ambulance crew sped to
Springvale, where a male and female were unconscious in a park after using
heroin. They left the park before the ambulance arrived.

A Metropolitan Ambulance Service duty team manager, Mr Ron Eke, said units
were finding it difficult to keep track of the number of overdoses treated
each day.

``I try to keep tabs on heroin ODs, but the ambulance paramedics almost get
blase about the fact that they're at a heroin overdose,'' Mr Eke said.
``There are a lot of very respectable people who might live next door to
you and use heroin. It's not nice to think that someone who is a brother or
sister, a wife or boyfriend loses their life sitting in a parked car at
someone else's street - it is a really sad thing.

``(But) it is not confined to the seamy streets of Melbourne, it is right
across the whole city.''

Ambulances were called to another two overdoses, one in Flemington, the
other in Richmond, before the first death of the night. According to
police, James McLarty, 28, was having a few beers with his girlfriend and a
couple of mates in the backyard of his parents' Lalor house, when he
decided he needed a hit.

A Greensborough policeman, Senior Detective Allan Brown, said Mr McLarty
and his girlfriend apparently went into the house to use heroin bought
earlier in the day. By the time the girlfriend realised Mr McLarty was not
breathing and called an ambulance, it was too late.

The next call-out was also a fatal. A 30-year-old known heroin user, Mr
David Scutt, was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car in
Dickens Street, Elwood, at 9.02pm. Although no needles were found, his
death is a suspected heroin overdose.

Narcan was used to resuscitate Friday night's ninth overdose victim found
in Raleigh Road, Maribyrnong at 9.13pm. Seven minutes later, the same
treatment was used on the night's 10th victim at Abbotsford Street, North
Melbourne.

At 9.36, an ambulance crew found a man unconscious in his car at Sunshine,
with a needle still stuck in his arm. The next call was to Broadmeadows
Town Park, in Pearcedale Parade. Later still came the calls to Preston,
where an overdose victim was found at a bus stop, and to St Kilda, where
another was found in a Princes Street boarding house.

This year's heroin toll so far is 62, compared with 48 road fatalities.