A Florida man crashed his car into a jail to “visit some friends” while under the influence of designer drug flakka, officials said Tuesday.
Indian River County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Eric Flowers told WPBF that Patrick Rempe, 24, drove his car into the front doors of the jail and barely missed a deputy standing outside.
A surveillance video captured the incident:
He then slammed his car into a fence and got out before trying to scale it before becoming entangled on razor wire.
“Indian River County Emergency Medical Services were called to remove Rempe from the fence. Rempe spit on one of the deputies after being removed,” the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Flowers said Rempe was high on flakka, which has the chemical name alpha-PVP, and is a synthetic drug that is known to cause hallucinations, paranoia and behavioral changes. It’s become increasingly popular across the United States--namely in Florida--in recent months.
“This is what drugs do to you. Flakka is poisoning our youth. Fortunately, none of our deputies were injured and our facility wasn’t compromised,” Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar said in a statement.
Rempe told the deputies he only wanted to visit friends who were in the jail. Officials gave him what he wanted: he was booked in the jail on a number of charges.
He was treated for minor injuries.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, flakka is similar to synthetic cathinone drugs popularly called “bath salts,” and it takes the form of a white or pink “foul-smelling crystal” that people can eat, snort, inject, or vaporize in an e-cigarette or a similar device.
But U.S. officials say users can easily overdose on the drug and are prone to “violent aggression and self-injury.”
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