This April, a friend of high school ice hockey player Sequoyah Klingele became concerned when Sequoyah wasn’t responding to messages. The friend went looking for the 16-year-old and found him unresponsive in a house in La Honda, California, a small town in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The friend dialed 911, police records show. There was nothing emergency responders could do: Sequoyah, who had accidentally overdosed on methadone, had been dead for several hours.
Last year, with schools, youth sports and other programs closed and halted across the U.S. in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the rate of drug-related emergency calls for young people age 20 and under increased by 43%, an analysis of emergency response data found.