LINCOLN, Maine — They admit that they haven’t always been on the right side of the law, but when the time came early Tuesday to restrain a man believed to be hallucinating on the designer drug “bath salts,” Cory Evans and Alex Andrews didn’t hesitate.
The 19-year-old Evans and his friend, the 16-year-old Andrews, helped scare criminal trespassing suspect Dylan Smith, 20, of Howland away from Evans’ uncle’s apartment on Main Street. They were joined by two other friends as they shadowed Smith along Main to a house on Lake Street. After he allegedly broke in, they and a resident of the house restrained him until police came about 2:30 a.m.
Lasting about an hour, the whole encounter was surreal, Evans and Andrews recalled Wednesday.
“You could tell he was on something,” Andrews said of Smith. “We tried not to get too close. He was yelling and screaming. We didn’t know if he had a knife or what.”
“I was like, holy [expletive], what’s happening here?” Evans recalled. “You don’t usually see this kind of stuff around here.”
Police Chief William Lawrence complimented the four witnesses for helping keep Smith from hurting himself or others until Officer David Peters could arrive and coax Smith into custody. He appeared to be hallucinating that he was being chased by ax-wielding killers, according to police.
That Evans and Andrews have criminal records makes their assistance all the more noteworthy, Lawrence said. A criminal record check with the Maine State Bureau of Identification revealed that they were charged with criminal offenses last year. The charges against both appear to be pending because no dispositions are listed in the records.
“We don’t usually get help” from people with criminal records, Lawrence said.
Smith was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and has been issued summonses for criminal mischief, criminal trespass and violation of the conditions of his release, Lawrence said.
Evans’ father, Ed Evans, said he was in bed asleep at his Main Street apartment at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday when he heard a loud banging sound and shouting coming from the second floor, above him, at his brother David Evans’ apartment. Apparently Smith banged on the door with a broom handle and was shouting when his brother answered the door and took the handle away from Smith, Ed Evans said.
“I heard someone yelling, ‘Help me! Help me!’ I told Cory to go up there and see what was happening,” said Ed Evans, who suffers from lymphoma.
Cory Evans went upstairs and chased away Smith, who escaped by jumping off a fire escape. By this time, Andrews, who lives in the same apartment building, joined Evans as they listened for noise that might help them find Smith, whom they said they did not know. They had no idea what drew him to their apartment, they said.
They followed Smith to the area of the Lakeview Senior Housing complex at West Broadway and Main. Now joined by their friend Scott Curtis, 18, and another man they know only as Martin, they next trailed Smith at a discreet distance onto Lake Street, they said.
There they saw him shoulder through the front door when a resident answered and apparently run around the first floor before working his way into a young girl’s second-floor bedroom. A woman who lived at the house invited them inside to help restrain Smith, who at one point had five people holding him to a bed, Andrews said.
“We tackled him and had him down until David [Peters] got there,” Andrews said.
The incident marked the first time that either teen had encountered “bath salts,” which usually contain mephedrone or Methylenedioxypyrovalerone, also known as MDPV. Those are man-made chemicals that block neurotransmitters in the brain and can stop it from making dopamine, which controls the brain’s reward and pleasure centers, and promote hallucinations.
The drugs, which the Maine Legislature voted Wednesday to ban, recently have emerged as a problem in the Bangor area and statewide, with more than 29 overdoses reported to Maine hospitals this month. Bath salts also goes by the name “monkey dust” and Kryptonite. The legislation prohibiting the drug will not take effect until it is signed by Gov. Paul LePage.
“I was confused and shocked,” Andrews said of the incident Tuesday.
Samantha Springer, a 23-year-old friend of Ed Evans, said everyone was lucky that Cory Evans and his friends intervened.
“I think it’s crazy that people can take this drug and that it’s legal,” Springer said. “They could have gotten hurt or someone’s kid could have gotten hurt or somebody could have gotten lost in the woods.”