A four-year-old boy suffered a terrifying HIV scare after he was pricked in the foot by a dirty hypodermic needle that had been discarded by the ‘zombie’ drug addicts who have taken over the streets of Boston.
The youngster was jabbed by the needle while attending a birthday party in a South Boston park near his family home on July 11.
He ran out of the play area without any shoes on and screamed as a needle stuck out of the big toe on his left foot, his mother Caroline Flynn recalled.
‘I was freaking out. I was scared,’ Flynn told The Boston Herald, noting how ‘there was leftover blood in that needle’.
He was rushed to the emergency room at nearby Boston Medical Center where he underwent extensive blood testing, got an x-ray, and was prescribed multiple anti-HIV preventative medicines, which he reportedly ‘wasn’t able to tolerate’.
After a month of panic, Flynn finally got some ‘relief’ on Wednesday when doctors informed her that her son’s ‘blood tests came back negative’ for HIV and hepatitis.
Flynn, who is urging Massachusetts lawmakers to address the crippling opioid crisis, has now heartbreakingly shared how her son mistook the drug addicts that stagger through Boston as ‘zombies’.
‘We were sitting down at McDonald’s and he looked out the window and said, «Look Mom, zombies!»,’ Flynn told the newspaper.
Caroline Flynn (pictured holding one of her two children) says her four-year-old son suffered a terrifying HIV scare after he was pricked in the foot by a dirty hypodermic needle that had been discarded in a South Boston park
Drug addicts stumble through Boston’s city parks and streets, and are known to openly shoot up in public. Drug users are pictured smoking and shooting up at the intersection of Atkinson and Southampton Street in the South Boston neighborhood
She says her son watched as addicts stumbled around public streets, claiming that some were even openly shooting up.
He witnessed visibly intoxicated people pushing rusty wheelchairs and old shopping carts around. Others rode around on city-operated rental bicycles, she claimed.
Flynn has called on legislators to urgently take action, telling the newspaper how ‘something needs to be done’ to combat the drugs epidemic.
The mother even suggested that anyone caught shooting up in public be arrested and forced to undergo addiction treatment.
Boston’s raging drug problem has been in the spotlight after residents lashed out at Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu, blaming her policies that allegedly enable drug use.
Locals claim Wu’s controversial decision to hand out free crack pipe syringes and other paraphernalia to addicts in 2022 has helped fuel the problems.
While her administration pitched the move as ‘harm reduction,’ critics have countered that all she’s done is increase the permissiveness of public drug use in Boston.
Massachusetts state Sen. Nick Collins is among those pushing for a crackdown on the city’s open-air drug markets and has branded the Flynn family’s case as ‘collateral damage caused by the ongoing crisis at Mass and Cass’.
A pair of homeless men are seen passed out near the The Embrace monument in Boston Common, as children walk by
The homelessness crisis has plagued downtown Boston for many years, as people with nowhere to go are regularly seen sleeping on city streets
The intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, known as ‘Mass and Cass,’ is notorious for open-air drug usage.
Wu has tried to clear out the crime-ridden area, dubbed ‘Methadone Mile’, by trying to take down tent encampments. But instead of isolating the drug crisis, it has amplified and spread – further plaguing the historic city.
Flynn’s son stepped on a needle in park near the corner of Columbia Road and Mercer Street, less than two miles away from the so-called Methadone Mile.
‘Nobody should have to worry about stepping on a needle in a public park,’ Collins told the Herald, adding that we ‘owe it to the boy’ to intervene.
The senator called for a reform of the city’s public health policies, as well as protocols on civil interventions and discharge policies.
Residents from across Boston have complained that the Mass and Cass crackdown has led to ‘out of control’ spillover into their neighborhoods.
The streets of once-pristine communities, including ritzy Beacon Hill where the median housing price is $2.8million, have been left littered with dangerous needles.
A clean-up crew supported by the Newmarket Business Improvement District has estimated they pick up about 1,000 needles a day across Boston.
The intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, (pictured) known as ‘Mass and Cass,’ is notorious for open-air drug usage
Wu’s office, in a statement issued to the newspaper Thursday morning, reiterated that outdoor drug use is ‘illegal and unacceptable’.
The mayor’s office said they are using ‘active and continuous police enforcement’ in drug-stricken areas and working to ‘transition individuals into recovery programs’.
The city is said to be focused on needle pickup and has expanded working hours for its needle collection teams. Boston has also ended its outdoor and weekend syringe exchange.
‘No family should have to worry about their children’s safety playing outside,’ the statement added.
Daily Mail has approached the mayor’s office for further comment.
