Two Cellmates Overdose on Opioids at Santa Barbara County’s Northern Branch Jail

Two cellmates were brought back from the brink after apparently overdosing on opioids at Santa Barbara County’s Northern Branch Jail in Santa Maria on Saturday.

In a statement released Monday afternoon, Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Raquel Zick said that at around 4:56 p.m. on September 30, custody staff found an unresponsive female inmate with blue lips lying on her cell floor, experiencing an apparent overdose. Two doses of Narcan were administered to the inmate, who “eventually regained consciousness and was transported to an area hospital for follow-up care,” Zick said.

While the first inmate was being transported, custody deputies noticed her cellmate was also showing signs of an apparent overdose. Deputies called for a second ambulance and administered Narcan to the second inmate, who also regained consciousness and was taken to the hospital.

This Saturday’s incidents are only the latest in a series of opioid overdoses in the county’s jail system. In September, three overdoses were reversed over the course of three days at the Main Jail in Santa Barbara, where days before 37-year-old Goleta resident Luis Enrique Duron Rodriguez was found unresponsive in his cell and died after being transported to an area hospital. Earlier this year, in May, 57-year-old inmate David Lee Ligon died in the Northern Branch Jail of an apparent drug overdose just days after another inmate, Rio Favorite Ulvaeus, 45, of Santa Barbara, died of an opioid overdose in the Main Jail. 

Over the summer, a Santa Barbara County Grand Jury issued four blistering reports detailing how systemic gaps in the county’s criminal justice system led to the deaths of five inmates in Santa Barbara County jails last year. (Those reports are summarized here and can be read in full online here.)