COLUMBUS – A woman whose body was found near a West Side alley Tuesday was not a homicide victim; police say her death was the result of a much deadlier plague: drugs.
Jessica Beers, 28, was found in an alley behind 160 N. Guilford Avenue at approximately 8:45 a.m. by officers responding to a report of a body lying near the alley, Homicide Unit Sgt. Dave Sicilian said.
She was pronounced dead at the scene, apparently from a recent head injury, Sicilian said.
Investigators say Beers’ death was likely as a result of a drug overdose and the Franklin County Coroner’s Office has categorized the cause as “undetermined,” Sicilian said.
If an overdose is what killed Beers, her death will be added to a total that has long since exceeded the number of fatal overdoses in Franklin County in all of 2016, according to a report from Coroner Dr. Anahi Ortiz.
Ortiz said last week that her office had recorded 383 overdose deaths in the first 9 months of 2017, which was 9 percent higher than the 353 deaths recorded during all of 2016. She says the number is preliminary and may be revised upward.
The biggest culprit in the fatal overdoses appears to be the synthetic opiate fentanyl, which accounted for 40 percent of the total (see graph above), Ortiz said.
White residents continue to be the most frequent victims, accounting for 76 of all overdose deaths, but that is 6 percent lower than in 2016 while the rate among blacks is 4 percent higher at 22 percent. The scourge is claiming younger victims as well: the largest number of deaths occurred in people between 20 to 39 years old, compared with 2016 when the majority of victims were over the age of 30, Ortiz said.