Man charged in OD crash
A Clay Township man is in the Butler County Prison on charges he overdosed on drugs and crashed his car in Butler while driving on Thanksgiving Day with his 13-year-old son in the back seat.
Neither Jason D. Bieber, 34, nor his son was injured in the wreck about 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Pullman Square shopping plaza, Butler police said.
The boy, who lives with his mother in Beaver County, jumped out of the runaway car moments before it struck an embankment and slammed into a curb in front of the Arby’s restaurant drive-through exit.
The defendant was unresponsive in the driver’s seat when emergency crews got there, authorities said. He eventually regained consciousness after paramedics injected him with the anti-opioid drug naloxone.
He was subsequently arraigned on charges of driving under the influence of a controlled substance, child endangerment, reckless endangerment, driving with a suspended license-DUI related, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving a vehicle without valid inspection.
He remains jailed on $50,000 bail.
Investigators suspect Bieber was traveling west on Hansen Avenue when he passed out and lost control of the Ford Focus that he was driving. The car went over a grass embankment and traveled down the Pullman Square parking lot.
The defendant’s son told police, documents said, that he was able “to jump from the vehicle to avoid injury.”
The car ended up narrowly missing another vehicle traveling in the shopping center, before crashing near Arby’s.
Officers said they found Bieber “extremely pale (and) exhibiting the signs and symptoms of an overdose,” according to a police affidavit.
In plain view in the car, police said, was a stamp bag of suspected heroin and a capped syringe.
Police searched him and found more bags containing suspected heroin residue in the front pocket of his hooded sweat shirt.
Bieber refused further medical treatment after being revived. Police took him to Butler Memorial Hospital for a blood draw. Toxicology results are still pending.
