Yorktown Community to Raise Awareness and Join Efforts to Prevent Youth Deaths

Alliance for Safe Kids held a meeting last week, and discussions were centered around the tragic deaths of two young adults who died of a drug overdose the last week of March. During the meeting, attendees briefly discussed creating a fast-response team, the goal of which would be to reach the entire community after such tragedies.

"We've had a lot of these events to deal with...too many," said Lisa Tomeny, coalition coordinator for the Yorktown-based Alliance for Safe Kids. 

On March 26, , 21, and Thomas Plant, 22, of a heroin overdose at a Hanover Street home. Five packets of heroin were found in the bedroom where the two young adults were found, police said. 

The idea now is to create a Youth Incident Response Team, and the ways it would help and react are still being determined. ASK and the Yorktown Interfaith Ministers Association have been trying to figure out how to respond when such tragedies occur, as well as how they could help prevent them. 

In February, the town of Yorktown got together to host  sparked by recent youth deaths due to drugs and alcohol abuse, depression, as well as physical abuse, bullying, violence and accidents. One of its goals was to "help break the cycle of accidental death, funerals and regret" and give kids and other community members the tools to know what to do when a friend is in danger or how to react when a tragedy occurs. 

The Rev. Claire Woodley-Aitchison, of St. Mary's Episcopal Church, said teens are the ones who are "first responders" because they first see what's going on in their friends' lives. The idea is to give them the tools to recognize when a friend is in trouble and the ability to ask for help.

"Help Stop Young Deaths in Yorktown!" was started through Facebook's Causes application, and there are currently more than 1,190 members.

"Our town has been through so much grief and saddness due to the numerous deaths of young adults. In the past 6 years there have been roughly 23 deaths in our community and surrounding areas. I have contacted the nonprofit agency To Write Love On Her Arms and in order for them to stage an event in Yorktown, we need to raise $5,000," wrote Jessica D'Amato on the page.

The Yorktown Police Department, which has partnered with ASK, has stepped up its drug enforcement efforts in recent years. Police chief Daniel McMahon, Lt. Robert Noble and police officer Richard Finn attended the discussion last week. Children who experiment with drugs would often start using prescription drugs and chief McMahon said if parents have a prescription for themselves, they should either hide it or monitor it from their children.

"The important factor is the parents," McMahon said. "When the children are young you get a child-proof cap on the bottle of the prescription and that really shouldn't stop when they get older."

If the child has a prescription, parents should also be aware and monitor the use. Lt. Noble said parents should look for sign in their children for drug use.

"The real issue is the disconnect between what is really happening and what parents perceive to be happening," Tomeny said. 

This week, in another effort to educate teens about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, Yorktown High School seniors were required to with a parent or they would not be allowed to go to prom. 

ASK is asking residents to join the Westchester County initiative to remove potentially dangerous prescription drugs, particularly controlled substances, from medicine cabinets this weekend. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including the home medicine cabinet, members of ASK said.

The Prescription Drug Take-Back days are Friday, April 8, noon to 4 p.m. and Saturday, April 10, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the in Yorktown.