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Firefighter's Secret Life of Drug Abuse Leads to Own Death

WINTER PARK, Fla. –  a Winter Park firefighter who served the community for 25 years died of an overdose after stealing and using drugs meant to sedate patients in the back of an ambulance.

A.J. Isaacs was 47, a husband and a father.  His colleagues described him as a respected member of the fire community.  He was an emergency medical services captain.

As reported by 9 Investigates, there were few safeguards in place to keep tabs on the number of narcotics going in and out of his fire station because he alone oversaw the inventory process.  His access and control over the storing of those drugs led to years of him diverting drugs and an addiction even his closest colleagues didn’t see.

 

“It was rough.  It’s still difficult to accept, No. 1, that he’s not with us anymore, but secondarily, how he ended up passing,” Winter Park Fire Chief Dan Hagedorn said.

 

Hagedorn started within a year of Isaacs at the department, where they both grew their careers.  Despite considering him one of his closest colleagues, Hagedorn says no one knew Isaacs was concealing drug use that was enabled by his unsupervised access to the drug inventory at Fire Station 61.

“We look back now, in retrospect, and realize there was a flaw in the system,” Hagedorn said.

Isaacs was in charge of almost all removal and replacement of drugs from a secure storage box in the fire station.

Isaacs was also one of just three people who had a master key to a vending system that stored those drugs, and he also had access to the computer system, which gave him the ability to manipulate the total number of vials that were shown available.

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EMSFSN Staff
EMSFSN Staff

EMS Flight Safety Network is The People Who Keep Air Medical Safe.

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