Life’s harsh lessons

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Deputy Madison County Coroner Carlos Coyle shows the inside of the county morgue’s cooler to members of Berea Community School's UNITE Club during the students’ visit Wednesday.

April 16, 2009

Students take grim tour

Bill Robinson The Richmond Register Thu Apr 16, 2009, 08:20 AM EDT

The lessons that 12 members of Berea Community School’s UNITE Club learned Wednesday were not academic.

They looked at some of life’s harsh realities.

The students, who UNITE founders hope will steer their peers away from drugs, took a day-long tour that started in drug court and ended at the Berea Cemetery.

Along the way, they visited the Madison County Detention Center and the county morgue.

“We see a lot of senseless tragedy here,” said Deputy Madison County Coroner Carlos Coyle as he opened the door of what resembled a large walk-in cooler.

This was not a grocery store cooler, however. This was the morgue where Coyle said he and his colleagues all too often bring the bodies of young drug overdose victims.

“We see a lot of senseless tragedy here,” Coyle said. “Some tragedies can’t be prevented, but many can. When a young person dies from an easily preventable tragedy, such as a drug overdose, it’s even more senseless.”

Often, drug users foolishly “think they know everything about the drugs they are using,” he said. “They think they can’t overdose from relatively small drug doses.”

A combination of multiple drugs, perhaps mixed with alcohol, even in small amounts can be deadly, he told the students.

Coyle, also an assistant director of the Madison County Emergency Medical Service, urged the students to be “true friends and make a phone call” when a friend has been using drugs or alcohol.

“They may get mad at you, but you may save their lives,” he said.

Putting someone to bed after they have passed out from alcohol or drug consumption is not kind, Coyle said.

“They may never wake up,” he said.

Drug and/or alcohol overdoses can cause regurgitation or seizures after the victim loses consciousness. A person can strangle or aspirate from vomit while unconscious, and seizures can lead to cardiac arrest.

“If an overdose victim stops breathing or has no pulse, it’s very difficult to revive them,” Coyle said. “Even if their pulse or breathing can be restored, they may be brain dead.

“You have to decide whether you want to be a leader or a follower,” he told the students. “If you’re a follower, you or one of your friends may end up here,” Coyle said, pointing into the cooler.

While at the morgue, UNITE Club co-founder Latonya Hager told the students about her son’s death from a combination drug overdose and read from his autopsy report.

“The autopsy showed his lungs were filled with vomit,” said Hager, a registered nurse.

Hager was upbeat for most of the tour, but wept as she told of watching as her teenage son’s body loaded in a bag and shipped to Frankfort for his autopsy.

The tour ended with a visit to the mausoleum of her son, Drew Ramey, a former high school athlete who died at age 19 in 2005.

Hager and a former BCS student, whose father was sent to prison for trafficking in methamphetamine, organized the UNITE Club last year.

“I think there’s no more gray for these kids,” said Unite Club faculty sponsor Wayne Robertson, BCS middle school guidance counselor. “Drug issues should be clearly black and white for them now. I think they are ready to lead.”

Bill Robinson can be reached at brobinson@richmondregister.com or at 624-6622.

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