by Christopher Peak | Aug 16, 2018 8:01 am

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Posted to: Health, Downtown

On his way home after work Wednesday night, Jesus lingered to watch the flashing lights as paramedics responded to a wave of drug overdoses on the Green.

Before he went home, he would end up saving a life.

By the time Jesus’s shift ended, around 9:10 p.m., the city’s emergency personnel had already responded to over 60 overdoses. Throughout the day, bodies fell left and right on the Green, after people smoked what cops said was a synthetic cannabinoid called K2 that they suspected, at least in some cases, was laced with an opioid.

In this mass casualty incident, no one has died so far. Two people were arrested.

Jesus, a 23-year-old who lives in the suburbs and works downtown, had already had run-ins of his own with the police, including one for which he currently faces a felony charge. He declined to give his last name.

As he walked by the emergency medical technicians, paramedics and police gathered in the park Wednesday night, Jesus came across two people who looked like they were in the midst of a poisoning.

A man was on the ground, choking, as if he were having a seizure, while a woman stumbled forward, hacking up a deep cough every 15 seconds, he recalled.

Jesus said he waved down an ambulance and waited until they were transported to the hospital.

A few minutes later, around 9:35 p.m., paramedics loaded their 71st overdose victim, an older white man, into an ambulance on Church Street at the center of the Green.

Across the street, in the walkway between the Connecticut Financial Center and the U.S. District Court, Jesus noticed a guy he’d seen, head down, a few minutes before. The man was now tying a strap to a tree branch, looking like he was going to attempt suicide.

Jesus told him to stop, but the man silently batted at his hand.

Jesus flashed a light at the paramedics less than 200 feet away, trying to get their attention. Nobody noticed.

By the time he ran over, Jesus was incoherent. He said a guy had “a string around his neck.”

The emergency personnel were confused.

“Why are you telling us this?” one asked.

Jesus eventually got out that the guy was trying to kill himself.

Four firemen dashed down the tree-lined passageway and cut the black cord from which the man was trying to hang himself. The man ran from the firefighters, trying to climb over a metal barrier. They pulled him off and brought him to the ground. Two police officers helped restrain him in handcuffs.

“Tell me what’s going on today,” one paramedic said.

“What made you do this?” another asked.

The group of responders helped prop the man up into an upright position.

Kneeling next to him, the paramedic wiped the man’s face clean, as he kept talking. “Right place, right time,” he told the man. “Things worked out the way they should, right?”

Watching as they put the man onto a stretcher to seek medical help, Jesus said he didn’t know how to feel about what had just happened that night.

Because of his job downtown, he’d seen K2 — sometimes called “spice” — being traded on the Green for almost a year. Nobody seemed to talk about it, he said, but now the world was seeing its potency.

He appeared reluctant at first to share who he was, especially after the Register published his mugshot in the past. But then he changed his mind.

At least, he said, he’d be in print for “doing something good this time.”

Jesus finally hopped on a bike and headed home, and the city’s first responders regrouped.

They hadn’t been able to catch a break. Throughout all of last year, New Haven’s paramedics were dispatched to 547 overdoses. That means on Wednesday alone, they handled the same number of overdoses within a day that they normally see across seven weeks.

Standing at the center of the Green, they traded details about what had happened, answered reporters’ questions, and waited for the next call, prepared to take on whatever came next in a night that felt unending.

If someone you know exhibits the warning signs of suicide, like talking about wanting to die, expressing a feeling of being trapped or hopeless, isolating themselves, increasing drug or alcohol use, or displaying extreme mood swings, do not leave the person alone.

You can call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or you can call 9-1-1 and ask for a clinician or an officer with crisis intervention training. Locally, the Connecticut Mental Health Center’s emergency services are also available Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at 203-974-7713 or 203-974-7714.