There have been 71 overdose deaths in the county in the previous seven weeks, officials said. On Thursday, Peterson's office announced that 70 people have died from probable drug overdoses in Milwaukee County in the past seven weeks. Adam Peterson, 29, on Monday became one of the more than 140 people whose death in Milwaukee County is believed to be related to narcotics. An emergency medical team was unable to resuscitate Peterson, who was pronounced dead shortly before 7:30 p.m. Data released from the office on Wednesday showed that this year is on track to outpace the previous five in heroin-related deaths and will exceed the number of deaths classified as homicides in each of the four years from 2011 to 2014. First responders administered Narcan, a drug used as an antidote to opiates. On Thursday, Peterson, who became the county's medical examiner in 2008, had no comment and asked for privacy for himself and his family.
– There have been more than 160 drug-related deaths in Milwaukee County, Wis., this year, 70 of them in the last seven weeks, and that is more than just a grim statistic for Chief Medical Examiner Brian Peterson. His own son, Adam Peterson, a 29-year-old with a history of drug use, was found on the floor of a friend's apartment Monday and was pronounced dead after failing to respond to anti-overdose drug Narcan, WISN reports. Brian Peterson, who has asked for privacy, told a conference earlier this month that his office was dealing with more overdose deaths than murders, car accident deaths, and sleep-related infant deaths combined, the Journal Sentinel reports. "We had a 1-year-old found dead on a mattress of methadone poisoning," Peterson told the round table. "Unfortunately, that's not uncommon either." He described medical examiners as "kind of the last responders," whose job it is "to help with clean data to help everybody understand." "I was sitting at the same table as Brian two weeks ago in Milwaukee discussing the trail of tragedies and heartbreak that addiction leaves in its wake," Sen. Ron Johnson tells the Journal Sentinel. "No family is immune. My prayers go out to Brian and his family at this time. I will continue to fight this fight for all those who have lost loved ones." (This small city in West Virginia had to deal with 27 overdoses in less than five hours.)