Good Samaritan Blames Latest K2 Overdose On Despair

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – A Brooklyn man who came to the aid of one of five victims of the most recent K2 overdose last weekend said the real problem isn't addiction – it's isolation and despair.

"I guess that's why we stopped," said Anthony, 35, who said he and his friends helped revive a "panicked" man lying on the sidewalk near Myrtle Avenue and Broadway on Saturday. "If we had lost our support structure, it could have been us."

The man Anthony rescued is one of hundreds of people who have overdosed on a toxic strain of synthetic marijuana sold at the intersection where Bed-Stuy meets Bushwick over the past two years.

Mass overdoses in May and another in the summer of 2016, along with a K2 user who fainted onto the M train tracks in June and a bust at Big Boy Deli, have earned the area underneath the Myrtle-Broadway subway station the moniker "Zombieland," and have local politicians calling for a major investment in social services.

"With under-education, underemployment, problems with housing, those are the reasons that make an environment of hopelessness," Bed-Stuy city councilman Robert Cornegy said at a press conference Monday afternoon. "The ground is so ripe for this. "

Cornegy stood with City Councilman Anthony Reynoso and representatives from the NYPD and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez to promise their constituents they would not vilify K2 users and would battle quality-of-life concerns they said are at the root of the epidemic.

Cornegy also commended the NYPD for recent drug busts he argued had pushed sales out of bodegas, onto the streets, and slowed down sales of the potentially life-threatening drug.

"We got Bushwick and Bed-Stuy standing together on this corner to send a declarative statement that between us the community and the NYPD, we will not allow this," he said. "If we really want to make a change in the community we have to come together."

Cornegy's message spoke to Anthony, who stopped by the press conference across the street from Big Boy Deli, one of the more notorious outposts for synthetic marijuana.

Anthony said it would have been "unconscionable" to ignore the dazed man who seemed "panicked" and lost on the Brooklyn corner. That's why he got him sitting upright, called an ambulance, and kept him company as they waited for medics to arrive.

"The use is just a symptom of despair," Anthony said. "If you don't have access to services and you're suffering, you're going to do what ever you can to relieve that suffering."

"This is a crisis, we're all one community and we're all affected," he said. "It doesn't take a lot to make sure somebody's okay."

Photos by Kathleen Culliton