Published: July 27, 2007 11:16 pm      

Accident linked to drug treatment

PATTON — Wednesday’s crash that claimed the lives of a 63-year-old Mahaffey woman and her 3-year-old granddaughter is just one of many that have been linked to drivers who had recent treatment at methadone clinics.

Bobbi Jo Morgan, 22, of Patton, killed Bertha Kitchen and her granddaughter, Samantha, when Morgan’s car left the roadway and traveled through two yards and a wooden fence before coming to rest in a driveway located in a 35-mile-per hour zone on Route 36.

Sources close to the investigation say Morgan admitted to state police that she was traveling home to Patton after receiving treatment for heroin addiction at Discovery House, a Clearfield County methadone clinic. The facility recently moved from Curwensville to a site near the Clearfield County airport in Lawrence Township.

Messages left by The Tribune-Democrat on an answering machine at the facility were not returned.

Patton Borough police Chief Vince Leppert said he has pulled over motorists who were found to be driving under the influence of methadone.

He says patients should not be permitted to drive home after being “dosed” at a clinic. According to prescribing information published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the drug is said to help addicts overcome heroin addiction by curbing cravings for the drug.

“We have had people driving back from the Clearfield clinic through Patton, and have charged them with DUI at 12:30 in the afternoon,” Leppert said. “I had a guy driving on the wrong side of the road once ... and he was on his way back from getting his methadone.”

Last year, a letter from Summer Weir of Patton was published in The Tribune-Democrat’s Readers Forum, where she supported keeping Discovery House in Curwensville, despite calls from the community to move the facility.

Weir, who was receiving medical assistance at the time, said she would have to drive to Pittsburgh or Hermitage for dosing if the facility closed. The clinic was one of a few in the state that accepted medical assistance, Weir said, and she couldn’t afford the $100 weekly fee to remain heroin-free.

In an ironic twist, just a few weeks after the letter was published, Weir was seriously injured in a vehicle accident in Grampian shortly after being treated at the clinic. The crash occurred about a mile from the Curwensville facility.

According to her mother, Patricia Thomas, Weir is still recovering from her injuries – and she is still making the trip to Clearfield for methadone. But now, Weir is transported by a medical van.

“These accidents are still going to happen,” Thomas said, adding that her daughter was never warned about the side-effects of methadone, and was never told not to drive after being dosed.

“(Methadone) is not supposed to make you tired that quick, unless you’re taking other medications,” Thomas said. “But a lot of these people are taking other medications, like for depression. It does make them tired.”

Thomas said about a year before her daughter’s accident, Weir was cited by state police after another motorist called police after witnessing the woman driving on the wrong side of the road for more than four miles. Again, Weir was returning from the clinic.

State police asked Thomas to call the clinic and ask if there was anything on the medication label that would caution Weir from driving.

“(The clinic staff) get the medicine and mix it into the containers, and dispense it to the people as they go in to dose,” Thomas said. “It doesn’t state they are not supposed to drive.”

Three years ago, an Altoona man received serious, permanent injuries in a head-on crash caused by Crystal Ickes, who was killed in the accident.

Ickes had recently left Alliance Medical Services in Richland Township after undergoing methadone treatment when she crossed the center line on U.S. Route 22 and smashed into Matthew Stever’s vehicle.

Stever tried to sue Ickes’ psychiatrist, arguing that the doctor should have prohibited his patient from driving, knowing the danger of mixing anti-depressant drugs and methadone.

Pam Gilman, director of the Richland Township clinic, did not return a telephone message for comment.

Last month, the state Superior Court upheld a decision by Blair County Court that dismissed Stever’s suit, saying the law must balance the public interest in helping heroin addicts against the consequences of methadone treatment.

Leppert doesn’t agree.

“If you’re going to a methadone clinic, and you’re going to be under the influence of an altering substance, you shouldn’t be driving,” the police chief said. “Most prescription drugs say not to operate machinery or vehicles under various medications. This isn’t any different.”

Thomas said if more clinics were allowed to build in rural areas such as Patton, accidents would decrease.

“People are fighting against having these clinics, and more of these accidents are going to happen,” Thomas said. “Kids like Summer are trying to turn their lives around, and driving as far as they have to for treatment isn’t helping.”

Thomas, who said Weir and Morgan are good friends, said Morgan “has not been doing very well” since Wednesday’s crash, and is avoiding the media.

“I’ve known Bobbi Jo a long time, and she is trying to turn her life around,” Thomas said.

“For the media to drag out her criminal history like they did ... I don’t agree with that.”

Thomas said she is a former resident of the Mahaffey area, and still knows a lot of the people there.

“I cannot imagine what those people are going through,” Thomas said of the Kitchen family and their friends and neighbors. “I won’t say that they don’t have the right to be angry at Bobbi Jo. But she didn’t mean for this to happen.

“It was a tragic accident,” Thomas said.

Luis Gonzalez, clinical pharmacologist at Memorial Medical Center, said patients who repeatedly take methadone to treat heroin addiction will become tolerant over time to the drug’s side effects, like drowsiness.

“With time, someone who takes methadone to prevent a return to using heroin becomes tolerant to these drugs, and the tolerance reduces the chance of drowsiness and impaired mental faculties,” Gonzalez said.

“There are a lot of over-the-counter medications that are probably more dangerous than people on chronic methadone.”

Speaking in general terms, and not on the Morgan case, Gonzalez said other medications can contribute to the inability to operate a vehicle or machinery while also taking methadone.

“But it is on a case-by-case basis, and it depends on what other kinds of medicines one is taking, and how long they have been taking it,” Gonzalez said.