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Parents forced into tough conversations after reviving man from OD in front of kids

MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass. -- A chance encounter outside a Middleborough Friendly’s brought strangers to the rescue just in the nick of time.

Two families, both with young children in tow, are being credited with saving a man’s life in the parking lot moments after he overdosed on Sunday night.

Stacey Bean had just parked outside the restaurant when she was immediately met by a frantic request.

“All I did was step out of the car and she ran over the me in a panic,” she said. “[She] said ‘do you know how to use this?’ I said what is it? She said it’s Narcan, I said ‘no, but I’ll do it.’”

The woman handed Bean the Narcan and pointed her to a man slumped over in the passenger seat of a car across the parking lot.

“Like he was dying, he was gray it was morbid it was gruesome,” Bean said.

The man who had apparently just overdosed on heroin was fading fast.

“I fiddled around with [the Narcan], squirted it, got it up his nose he started breathing shallow,” Bean told Boston 25 News.

Just steps away, Bean’s 9-year-old daughter and the child’s father who had arrived in another car to meet her.

“I yelled at her to go back to the vehicle, I didn’t want her to see a guy passing away,” Daniel Spillane, the girl’s father, said.

Spillane called 911 before he and another father with young kids pulled the overdosing man out of the car and began chest compressions.

“I tried talking to him, ‘buddy, hang in there.’ No response, every once in a while you get a gurgle,” Spillane said.

The weight of saving a life was lifted off all over their shoulders when authorities arrived.

Middleborough Police administered two more doses of Narcan and paramedics administered another dose.

The man in his 30’s was transported Morton Hospital after receiving the four doses of Narcan.

According to police, he is expected to survive.

“I hope he smartens up and gets help. He needs it,” Spillane said.

The weight of a complicated and difficult conversation has been now been left on both families whose young kids saw something they’re still grappling to understand.

“I know I was bothered by it all last night and I’m an adult,” Spillane said. “We talked to her, we said ‘look at it, this is what drugs do. This is why you don’t do drugs.’”

The other father who helped save the man’s life tells Boston 25 News he had his three children, a 9-year-old and twin 10-year-olds, alongside him.

He said the encounter has left his children sorting through a range of emotions, but he hopes this will prevent them from one day venturing down the same path.

As for Bean and Spillane – they now plan on purchasing Narcan to carry around at all times in the event that they’re ever faced with something like this again.

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