Richland County Coroner’s Office — Investigated Woman’s Death
A young woman was found dead in a Columbia apartment in January, and for weeks her death made no sense to investigators: her blood tested negative for any substance, even though the scene looked like a fentanyl overdose. Months later, after expanded lab testing, the Richland County Coroner’s Office and the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division zeroed in on an answer nobody in the state had encountered before — a synthetic opioid called cychlorphine.
A Negative Test That Didn’t Add Up
According to The State, preliminary testing identified the substance as cychlorphine after it turned up in powder collected from the apartment. The coroner’s office said it does not yet know whether the woman had taken any cychlorphine, and samples were sent out for additional testing, with the SLED forensics lab conducting a second round of analysis to verify the initial finding. As NPR reported, Richland County Coroner Nadia Rutherford described the original blood test as coming back clean despite physical signs that pointed toward an opioid overdose — “their blood tested negative for any substance, which was very odd” — which is what pushed her office to expand testing in search of new compounds.
Cychlorphine is difficult to catch with the tools hospitals and first responders normally rely on. Per WMBF News, the drug does not show up on commonly used fentanyl test strips, and Healio reports it is similarly undetectable in standard drug test strips and opioid urine screens. That gap in detection is a central reason officials say cases can go unexplained for so long, as happened in the Richland County investigation before the lab broadened what it was looking for.
How Strong, and How Widespread, Remains Unsettled
Estimates of cychlorphine’s potency vary depending on who is doing the estimating. Healio describes it as up to 10 times more potent than fentanyl, while Rutherford told WIS-TV that the drug is about 40 times more potent than fentanyl. Whichever figure proves accurate, officials agree on the danger: WMBF News reports the drug can cause a person to stop breathing or have a heart attack, leading to a fatal overdose, and naloxone — sold as Narcan — can reverse a cychlorphine overdose, though experts say a higher dose might be needed along with repeat doses, according to The State…