By Shereen Siewert | Wausau Pilot & Review
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. Chat online at 988lifeline.org.
A Weston woman who smuggled drugs into the Marathon County Jail that were given to an inmate who overdosed in a suicide attempt was given a withheld sentence this month and ordered to spend four years on probation.
Jordan Truesdale, 25, was convicted on charges of first-degree recklessly endangering safety and delivering heroin, both felonies. The charges were filed Oct. 12 in Marathon County Circuit Court. She will participate in Marathon County Drug Treatment Court programming as a condition of her sentence. In a withheld sentence, a defendant can avoid prison time if he or she succeeds on probation and follows the rules set out by the Court. Defendants who do not succeed are sentenced at a later date.
Truesdale was booked into the Marathon County Jail on Sept. 29 on an outstanding warrant and a charge of possessing drug paraphernalia after she herself overdosed. The Wausau Police Department responded to that incident, in which Truesdale was revived and transported to Aspirus Wausau Hospital. While riding in the ambulance, Truesdale removed a packet of heroin from her bra and placed it inside her body, according to statements she made to police.
That evening, corrections officers responded to a disturbance inside a jail cell block after an inmate was pounding on the door calling for help, according to the incident report. There, they found an inmate lying on the floor, her lips blue, drifting in and out of consciousness. She was revived after an officer called for a nurse, who provided oxygen while the officer began CPR. After two rounds of Narcan the woman regained consciousness, later allegedly admitting to police she was attempting to take her own life.
Police say Truesdale admitted smuggling heroin into the jail and giving the drugs to the woman who overdosed. The woman survived the attempt.
