Three men were hospitalized Monday evening after overdosing inside the Wheaton Metro station, with first responders finding them in cardiac arrest in different parts of the facility before reviving all three with Narcan. Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Services crews were dispatched to the station in the 11000 block of Veirs Mill Road at approximately 8:15 p.m., where medics performed CPR on two unresponsive men while a third was found unconscious but still breathing.
According to FOX 5 DC, Montgomery County Police said the men were discovered scattered across different sections of the station, and all three regained consciousness after receiving naloxone. Their exact condition afterward was described as unknown, and police say the investigation into what caused the overdoses remains ongoing. The men were taken to a hospital for further treatment.
A Station Built Deep Underground
The Wheaton Metro station, which opened in September 1990 on the Red Line, sits 115 feet below the surface and is reached by 230-foot-long single-span escalators — the longest of their kind in the Western Hemisphere, per MyMCMedia. The platform is roughly a two-and-a-half-minute escalator ride from street level, a layout that put the three men in separate pockets of the station before responders located them.
It is not the station's first brush with tragedy. In May 2023, an 18-year-old was fatally shot on the train platform following an argument on the station's escalator, an incident that halted Red Line service between Silver Spring and Glenmont and later led to the 16-year-old shooter being sentenced in July 2024 to 35 years to serve.
Transit Officers Carry Narcan as Overdose Calls Rose
Transit officials have been preparing for scenes like those on October 12, 2026, for years. WMATA fully equipped all active-duty Metro Transit Police Department officers and crisis intervention specialists with naloxone in January 2023, after overdose calls across the transit system climbed from 27 in 2021 to 43 in 2022, according to WMATA. Between January and mid-September 2023 alone, transit officers deployed Narcan 82 times across buses, trains, and stations, and made 192 drug-related arrests over that same stretch, per a report from FOX 5 DC's sister coverage.
County Overdoses Climb as State Numbers Fall
The Wheaton incident lands amid a split picture on overdose trends in Maryland. Montgomery County recorded at least 82 fatal drug overdoses in 2025, a 6.5% increase from 77 deaths the year before, with fentanyl involved in more than half of those deaths and cocaine-involved overdoses also rising significantly, according to Montgomery Community Media. That local increase came even as fatal overdoses statewide dropped 26% in 2025 to 1,315 deaths — a 10-year low — per the Office of Governor Wes Moore.
Local health officials have leaned on harm-reduction efforts to counter the trend, distributing nearly 31,000 doses of free naloxone to residents and community groups in 2025, funded in part by national opioid settlement dollars, the same Montgomery Community Media report notes.
No charges have been announced in connection with the October 12, 2026, overdoses, and Montgomery County Police have not identified the substance involved. Investigators have not said whether the three men consumed a shared batch of drugs inside the station, and that detail remains unresolved as the investigation continues.
