Washington County has had at least four fatal overdoses in the past five days, the county’s sheriff’s office said Wednesday. Police in the county have responded to 15 overdoses during that period.
All of the overdoses “are likely related to fentanyl use,” the sheriff’s office said, warning people of “a potentially dangerous batch of drugs circulating the street marketplace.”
Officials said Beaverton had six overdoses, one fatal, this week; Hillsboro has had one fatal overdose; and unincorporated Washington County has had five overdoses, two fatal.
On Thursday, the sheriff’s office announced that police had arrested four people from Honduras at a Portland hotel in connection with one of the fatal overdoses. They were identified as Manuel Velasquez-Estrejo, Jorge Rivera-Nunez, Dennis Palma-Hurbina and Gretsel Ramos-Balladares.
The metro area’s fentanyl trade appears to have dispersed somewhat in the month since police shut down Washington Center, an abandoned building in downtown Portland that had served as an open-air market for the cheap, exceptionally powerful opioid.
Street fentanyl can be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, and it’s often sold illegally as a pill that looks like the prescription painkiller OxyContin or the anxiety medication Xanax.
In April, Portland police reported 11 overdoses in one night, three of them fatal. Most of the overdoses occurred near Washington Center, leading police in the following days to sweep and then board up the abandoned building.
Six weeks later, Portland police warned of “a potentially bad batch of drugs” making the rounds after 8 more suspected overdoses occurred in the city in over just a few days.
-- The Oregonian/OregonLive