CLEVELAND - The 19-year-old who struck and killed a woman riding an electric scooter in downtown Cleveland, admitted to police that he had taken heroin before getting behind the wheel, and that he has a history of opioid abuse.The crash fatally wounded 21-year-old Jenasia Summers.
She had rented a green "Icon-Q" electric scooter from Ray's Scooter Rental at the corner of Euclid and E. 9th Street, just blocks away from where she was rear-ended by the Chevy Cruze driven by Scott McHugh.
He's currently in the Cuyahoga County Jail awaiting his first court appearance on Tuesday.
Police reports say McHugh told officers he had snorted heroin in a grocery store parking lot, with a friend, shortly before the crash. After the crash, he was found unconscious in his car from a suspected overdose, where EMS workers woke him up with naloxone.
At the hospital, McHugh told authorities he was in rehab for opioid addiction and had been clean for 50 days.
The report says McHugh was "very emotional" at the hospital, saying he had been using opioids and heroin since he was 15 and that he doesn't remember anything after taking the drug until he woke up in the ambulance.
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(images by Robb Bailey/WTAM 1100)