A woman was charged Wednesday after two men overdosed on fentanyl and died at a home in Holly Springs. Investigators on Wednesday charged Alexandra Marie Prosper, of Lillington, with two counts of death by distribution. Prosper was being held in the Harnett County Detention Center on a $500,000 secured bond.
According to the Harnett County Sheriff's Office, deputies responded to a home Tuesday on Patstown Road in Holly Springs around 6:45 p.m. and found John Arthur Diaz, 54, and Steven Roy Wilson, 50, dead inside.
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The sheriff's office called the deaths a snapshot of a war on overdose deaths.
Harnett County Sheriff Wayne Coats said 23 people have died in the county this year on suspected opioid overdoses, with the majority of them related to fentanyl.
"These young folks – and not always young folks – they're just taking and they're gambling with their lives every time they do this," he said.
On Wednesday, deputies found a 21-year-old dead at a home in Spring Lake, another suspected fentanyl overdose. Another person at the scene was rescued by the drug Narcan, which many officers and first responders in the U.S. carry to help treat narcotics overdoses in an emergency.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that opioids are the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States. From January 2020 to 2021, overdose deaths involving opioids rose by more than 38%.
Coats has started a project called What Are You Missing to teach parents and the community what to look for to help those who may be addicted to opioids.
"I wish I could fill up a gymnasium full of parents getting involved to try and slow some of this down and save our citizens," he said.
The next meeting of What Are You Missing takes place June 30 at Flat Branch Presbyterian Church in Bunnlevel. It starts at 7 p.m.