Addict Says Video of His Overdose Saved His Life
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She`s unconscious right now. She`s got very shallow breathing.</s>ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, HOST, (voice-over): Bonded by addiction, two moms-to-be meet in rehab.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: i have two overdoses and two babies in the back.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you want your pacifier?</s>BANFIELD: Soon after, police say, they OD`d while snorting heroin in an SUV with their brand-new babies in the back seat.</s>RONALD HIERS, RECOVERING HEROIN USER: I`ve been addicted to heroin for 24 years.</s>BANFIELD: One long-time addict turns a near-death experience into a life- changing moment.</s>HIERS: The things you`ve become since committing to living a sober life.</s>BANFIELD: Inside America`s heroin problem as the human toll rises. Burned alive beyond recognition.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Horrific burns over 93 percent of her body.</s>BANFIELD: And left for dead in her torched car.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were expecting it to be just a normal car fire. You know, put it out, extinguish it, you know, it`d be done.</s>BANFIELD: Were a cheerleader`s final words the killer`s name?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She said, Eric set me on fire.</s>BANFIELD: A jury is deciding whether the murderer is the man on trial. Home alone, and totally out of control.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of her sitter options fell through. She left the kids in the care of the two 12-year-olds.</s>BANFIELD: Police say a mom leaves her four children, the youngest just 6, all alone with a gun.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were confused about what was happening.</s>BANFIELD: While she takes a European vacation.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What were you doing in Germany?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As soon as I found out about it, I made the trip down to Johnson (ph) and picked them up right away.</s>BANFIELD: But now Mom is posing for a very different kind of snapshot.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Four counts of child endangerment.</s>BANFIELD: Smile! You`re definitely on camera. To catch a predator, a man accused of traveling halfway across the country to have sex with a 9-year-old girl. Police say he brought candy and lubrication and described the vile acts he planned. He was even ready to meet the parents. Gotcha! Those parents were really cops waiting to put him away.</s>BANFIELD: Good evening, everyone. I`m Ashleigh Banfield. This is PRIMETIME JUSTICE. Night after night. reports come screaming across your television screen about America`s opioid epidemic, and night after night, we bring you another story that`s worse than the last. And I hate to tell you I got another one for you. But this one is a two-fer, a pair of moms in Florida who police say bonded while in rehab, what with their due dates within a week of each other. Video shows them allegedly overdosed on heroin with their babies, both of their babieds, in the back of the SUV, one just a month old, the other just two months old in the back seat. Officers say June Shwinert (ph) managed to call 911 saying her friend Kristen O`Connor (ph) was having a seizure.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.</s>OPERATOR: You say you think she`s having a seizure?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah. Either that-- I don`t know, yeah. It looks like she`s having a seizure. Oh, God!</s>OPERATOR: Is she breathing?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, look up.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you pull your head up?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Listen, Kristen! Hey! 911</s>OPERATOR: I mean, is she breathing?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, Kristen! Hey!</s>OPERATOR: I`m trying to get some more information from you. Is she breathing?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.</s>BANFIELD: Emergency responders arrived and began treating the moms. And here`s what a police officer`s body camera was witnessing the minute they got on the scene.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What`s going on?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got two overdoses and two babies in the back.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was parked next to them, and</s>I-- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought I was going to give her CPR because she quit breathing. I don`t know. The one was trying to call somebody. I don`t know if there`s drugs involved or not.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. How`s she doing?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`re both out.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Narcan</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It`s OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You want your pacifier? Here you go.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go. Yeah! Hi! Yeah. OK. It`s OK. It`s OK.</s>BANFIELD: The officers say the women relapsed once their babies were born. Both of those women have been charged now with child neglect. Those kids are in the care of other family members, and we`re just left with those images and the sounds of those crying babies. Not sure if they were just upset or if they were hungry, maybe both, 1 month old and 2 months old together with moms in the front seat out of it. Does releasing pictures like that and releasing video like that of people OD`ing, one worse than the other, does this help? Does it get the message out there? Or does it hurt? Does it revictimize those people all over again once they come to and maybe get with the program? Well, I want you to meet one man whose overdosing video went viral. You have likely seen it and probably not just once. He said releasing that video-- that saved his life.</s>RONALD HIERS, RECOVERING HEROIN USER: That`s what so many people missed about it. You know, those were two human beings apparently in a treatment center. I`m 61 years old. I`ve been addicted to heroin for 24 years.</s>HIERS: That is my wife of 24 years. She`s a beautiful person, if you only knew her. That is me. That`s me as far down as one could possibly sink. It feels like I`m watching the most powerful thing I`ve ever seen. When I saw it on the news, I knew it was me. You have to hit your rock bottom. And for me, that was mine. It really shocked me to my core. There`s no compassion.</s>COURTLAND GARNER, RECORDED VIDEO: I don`t deal with people on drugs like that. I know the kids be on social media. I want the kids to see the video, and they`ll be like, you know, Damn. I don`t need no drugs! Look at them guys.</s>HIERS: There`s no animosity in my heart for that man. He did not put myself nor my wife in that position. We put ourselves there. They played the video over and over and over. The humiliation and the embarrassment that we received didn`t matter. My family had to be embarrassed like that. I can`t say enough how sorry I am! The video was the best thhing that happened to me. It got us in a position to get help, to get cared for. Care at the treatment facility, Common Day, is wake up around 6:30. We go to gym class after that. There are some kids down there that I beat up on in ping-pong and basketball. I intentionally surrounded myself by young people because God knows I don`t want</s>BANFIELD: Ronald Hiers, the man in that video, joins me now live from Memphis. Ronald, thank you so much for joining us. And I should tell our audience that you`re almost-- I mean, it`s a year. It`s an anniversary of sorts. October 3rd of last year was when that video, you know, was taken and when your life completely changed. Luckily, you are with us, and that, you know, luckily you survived this. But I want to ask you about videos like this in general because we`re airing a lot of them. And news organizations all around the country are airing a lot of them. A lot of people think they do a lot of good, and other people think otherwise. And you say this saved your lives. Having these images of your wife and you, this saved your life. How?</s>HIERS: Well, had that video never been shot, I would have gotten back home and I would have continued on down that same path I was on to trying to kill myself because that`s where I was at in my life. I didn`t want to quit doing drugs, but I didn`t want to live anymore. So I was trying to commit suicide by overdose, and had several times. But I just was unsuccessful.</s>BANFIELD: After so many years-- I mean, 40 years, by your own admission, of being addicted and of being a drug addict. Why was it just this video that got you clean? Because, you know, clearly, you`d come close a lot to dying. Why weren`t those the wake-up calls? Why was this finally the wake-up call? Was it the humiliation, or was it something else?</s>HIERS: It was-- it was my bottom. The literature I read from these days, that`s the first time I`ve taken a look at my life and admitted just how unmanageable it was and how powerless I was to overcome an addiction. You know, I was just-- I was a drug addict, and that`s the way it was going to be, and I was a criminal and that`s the way it was going to be, and I was an alcoholic and that`s the way it was going to be. So I never thought anything different. But one of my daughters reached out to me, and she saw that video on her birthday. And she contacted an addiction campus`s hot line and reached out to them and told them that that was her father on that video. And they said that they would scholarship me to go into the rehabilitation center, if I was willing. And she didn`t even know where her daddy was. And she was 34 years old when that video was shot and I was 60. And that`s part of addiction. She didn`t know where her father lived. She had to call me just to find out my address.</s>BANFIELD: It`s unbelievable that she saw this viral video along with millions and millions of other people all around the world on her birthday. You know, the man who shot the video, it was clear-- you could hear him laughing as he`s witnessing the two of you overdosing. He says someone else had already called 911. But there`s two things at play, Ronald. He`s laughing at it all, and he`s humiliating the two of you. And at the same time, he`s saying, I know that kids watch social media and they`re going to see these two and think, I don`t want to be like them and I don`t want to do that stuff. Do you agree? Do you think he`s right in that respect?</s>HIERS: I don`t-- really, I shouldn`t even comment on it one way or the other. You know, it was his choice. We all make choices in life. That`s what God gave us the freedom of choice. And that was his. And so you know, from my perspective, I wouldn`t have done it. But then again, I know how to handle situations as such. He might not have, you know. So I make no judgment on him. I met the man. And I met his girlfriend. And they seem like real, real nice people. So--</s>BANFIELD: Can I ask you something, Ronald?</s>HIERS: --I can`t say anything bad about him.</s>BANFIELD: You know ,we`re all coping-- I ran your story. Before I now have had a chance to meet you, I ran your story on this program, on this network. And you know, we-- we talked about how this is such a crisis. How are we going to get our heads around this? How is America going to bounce back from this opioid epidemic? You bounced back. Can this country bounce back? Do you have any hope that we can actually fix the mess that`s out there?</s>HIERS: Well, I`m a firm believer in several things. One, that it-- it should have been addressed along ago. The heroin problem isn`t just now an epidemic. It`s been around. But the people that it affected years back-- and I mean, like I said, I got my first bag of heroin in 1972. So there was an epidemic been around for years. It`s just now reached out into the middle class neighborhoods. You know, these people in these $250,000, $300,000 homes, when it touches their kids, you know, or their husbands or their wives or-- well, now it`s time to do something about it-- because people before, it didn`t matter, you know. But because you can`t arrest your way out of the problem because for every one drug dealer you put in jail, there`s 15 or 20 more, as sad as it is, that`s willing to take their place.</s>BANFIELD: Ronald, stand by--</s>HIERS: I believe we got to start--</s>BANFIELD: Stand by for one minute because--</s>HIERS: Go ahead.</s>BANFIELD: --I think you really hit on something. I think you`ve really hit on something. I want to bring Brad Lamn into our conversation. He`s an addiction specialist. He`s the founder of Breathe Life Healing Center--</s>BRAD LAMM, ADDICTION SPECIALIST: Hey, Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: --and he`s live tonight in Los Angeles. Brad, thanks for doing this. I hope you`re able to hear everything that Ronald is saying. I know you`ve seen that video and many more like it. But I want to ask you--</s>LAMM: Yeah. And lived it.</s>BANFIELD: And lived it. Exactly. I want to ask the specifics about the publicity. There are a lot of people in this country who say this is the kind of thing that snaps people to attention and gets resources to communities and proves the problem has a face for first time. There are others, Brad, who say this is humiliating and it revictimizes these people. And there`s Ronald, who`s clean and sober for over a year, and he`s got to live with that video and see it over and over again for the rest of his life.</s>LAMM: But I got to tell you, Ronald, I`m so proud of you. I watch that video, and then I see you talking and I hear this amazing story of hope and recovery. You got your first dope in 1972, and you are a walking miracle. And that tells me that treatment does work. People can get better. And there`s hope to be had in the darkest of situations. But I hear your point, too, Ashleigh, that the reason why we watch these things sometimes is because there`s such a spectacle to it. But with 144 people dying every day of overdose in America, 144 people that we love and care about and want to hold close-- the idea that we`re either going to laugh or cry I think is the impulse. So when I heard that guy laughing, I was, like, sometimes we laugh because we don`t know what to do. But maybe if we treat the people that we love who are struggling like that 5-year-old that`s having trouble with balance or just learning how to ride a bike, and when they fall down and it doesn`t work out, we help them get back on, and we`re going to support them in it and not shame or blame them. Wouldn`t that be great? So I think good comes out of this, Ashleigh. And Ronald, I am so happy for you.</s>BANFIELD: Ronald, you can hear Brad, right?</s>HIERS: I can hear him. Yes, ma`am, I can. I appreciate you-- those kind words of encouragement. It`s people like you that keep me marching forward. But you know-- Brad was it?</s>LAMM: Yes, sir. Look, and I`m clean and sober almost 15 years. So you know, we share some of the same language and concept of recovery, too. I can tell by just hearing you talk.</s>BANFIELD: Can I ask both of you, since you both brought this up-- I`m going to start, if I can, with you, Ronald. Are you afraid-- are you afraid of heroin because it has a death grip on a lot of people, and relapse is regular. You`re sober and you`re out of it and you`re past that video for over a year now. Are you afraid you may end up in that video again, or at least something like it?</s>HIERS: No, ma`am. No way, shape, form or fashion am I afraid of heroin or any other drug or any other alcohol. My life`s been turned around completely. And I can say that, but I paid one heck of a price to get to where I`m at in my recovery. I did it for so long, you know, that I was tired. I was tired, you know? And that`s the thing about it. I don`t care what rehab you go to or how much money you spend on it, you have to want to recover before you can. And that`s the sad thing about this.</s>LAMM: Yeah, but I got to tell you this.</s>HIERS: So many people don`t--</s>LAMM: Ashleigh, I`ve done over a thousand interventions, too, and I believe the notion that you have to want to change, at least in the beginning when your brain is not supporting life even, is sort of a dinosaur concept. So I don`t judge people`s willingness to change. If you give me your hand for whatever reason, whether it`s the job saying, Hey, you`ve got to give this a chance or the family that`s saying, Hey, you`ve got to do this, I find that hope and miracles happen in all situations and it has very little to do with the person`s willingness in the beginning. I`ve had ornery people get in my car, and I`ve flown crazy people halfway around the country that didn`t want what I was trying to help them with, and they have recovered. So I think that`s the wonder of both of our stories.</s>BANFIELD: I just-- I want to tell the both of you-- I want to tell the both of you congratulations, and thank you, as well, because--</s>LAMM: Thanks for covering this story, Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: --because I also agree putting these things on television just gets the conversation going, and sometimes that`s as critical as the money, as well.</s>LAMM: Hear, hear.</s>BANFIELD: Thank you, and congratulations agian, Ronald, I`m glad you`re here with us. Brad, as always, thank you. Appreciate it.</s>LAMM: Thanks, Ashleigh.</s>HIERS: Thank you so much.</s>BANFIELD: A former cheerleader is set on fire and left to die. But before she dies, she is able to speak and tell first responders the name of the man who did it to her.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I asked, I said, Baby girl, you know who done this to you?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did she respond?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what did she say?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She said Eric.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I said, Honey, who did this to you? And all I heard was Eric.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I asked her who did this to you, and she said Eric.</s>BANFIELD: Here`s the big problem. The man that the prosecutors say is actually responsible-- his name is not Eric.