A teenager was found dead of an apparent overdose inside one of L.A. County’s juvenile halls Tuesday morning, just weeks after a state oversight board declined to shut the troubled facility down after years of concerning reports, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
The teen was found unresponsive in his room sometime Tuesday morning at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, according to multiple probation department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the department.
One official said an officer deployed Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose, but the teen could not be revived and was pronounced dead a short time later. The teen was no older than 18 and lived in the Secure Youth Track Facility, where youths accused of serious and violent crimes are housed, according to the source.
The probation department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Concerns about rampant drug use inside the Secure Youth Track Facility have been increasing in recent weeks. A report released by the L.A. County Office of the Inspector General last month detailed two incidents in late February in which youths were taken to local medical facilities or revived with Narcan after overdoses involving fentanyl.
An early March search of the unit where the teens overdosed uncovered several pills laced with fentanyl and “two large bindles of what appeared to be fentanyl” inside a youth dormitory, according to the inspector general report.
In a March hearing about those overdoses, an attorney representing one of the youths said they had recently been transitioned back to Los Angeles from the state Division of Juvenile Justice, which Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered closed in 2019 and will be fully shut down by July.
The attorney, alternate public defender Angeles Zaragosa, said the youths did not have issues with drugs before returning to L.A. County, according to a transcript of the hearing.
During the hearing, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza expressed concern that the situation could soon turn fatal, as it did Tuesday.
“It appears that it was a stroke of luck that the individuals that came across these two youths were trained in the use of Narcan and actually had it accessible,” Espinoza said. “If the youth had been in a different unit, or it had been at a time when there was an untrained staff member, it appears highly likely that one or both of the youths would have passed away.”
L.A. County’s juvenile facilities have been under intense scrutiny over the past year, as a staffing crisis has led to increased reports of violence and drug use in the halls. The California Board of State and Community Corrections has repeatedly deemed the halls “unsuitable” to house youth.
But last month, the board stopped short of shuttering the halls after the probation department’s latest failure to comply with state guidelines, a move that infuriated juvenile justice watchdogs and attorneys who say the conditions in the halls have deteriorated beyond repair.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
