BALTIMORE — Nearly a year after she watched in horror as a dozen people dropped like dominoes during a mass overdose in the Penn North neighborhood, Yolanda Witherspoon roamed the same alley behind a CVS store where people collapsed — and where she still buys drugs.
Witherspoon, 60, told The Baltimore Sun she uses cocaine, heroin and fentanyl. Since the mass overdoses last summer, she said she rarely buys from drug dealers she doesn’t know.
“I’m more careful about where I get my drugs from. I use the test strips,” Witherspoon said. The strips allow people who use drugs to check for the presence of dangerous substances, such as xylazine, an animal sedative not approved for use in humans. “You never know when someone else might sell a bad batch of drugs.”
The first mass overdose last year on July 10 sickened 35 people, putting a national spotlight on the West Baltimore neighborhood. Subsequent mass overdoses last year on July 18 and Oct. 8 hospitalized 27 others.
To get a sense of what Penn North is like a year after the first mass overdose, The Sun spent two days in the neighborhood, conducting interviews with nine people who use drugs or have used drugs.
As was the case last year, police maintained a steady presence at the intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues. Every day The Sun was in the neighborhood, an officer in a Baltimore Police SUV was posted on North Avenue near Pennsylvania, and an officer in a Metro Transit Police SUV was stationed on the opposite side of the intersection.
Read the full story by visiting The Baltimore Sun.
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