DUNWOODY, Ga. — A hairstylist is recovering from an unintentional interaction with a white powder that police now suspect contained fentanyl— an accident that struck him down instantly.
The powder was inside an envelope delivered to Salon Colour at The Shops of Dunwoody on Chamblee-Dunwoody Road. The mystery: Who sent it there?
It was a large “priority mail” envelope.
The address on the envelope was not visible because it was covered with stickers that said, “Return to Sender.”
And the return address—was the salon’s address.
Stylist Penny Boaz said that at about 2 p.m., one of the stylists opened the envelope, “And then all of a sudden, the next thing I know, he's out."
The stylist had collapsed.
"And his eyes had rolled back in the back of his head, he was catatonic," said Stylist Jennifer Finnell.
Finnell and Boaz said the stylist stopped breathing briefly.
First responders “got here, and they gave him a drug to revive him,” Boaz said, and took him to a hospital, for treatment and for tests to confirm if he had accidently breathed in any of the powder dust as he was opening the envelope.
Dunwoody police said Tuesday that their field tests indicated the powder contained fentanyl, and they are sending the powder to the state crime lab for analysis.
The envelope arrived at the salon two to three weeks ago, Boaz said, and sat on a table with other unopened mail.
Boaz and Finnell said several people in the salon picked it up and looked at it, but no one opened it until Tuesday.
“It sat around and sat around,” Boaz said, “and I started to tear back the return-to-sender label thinking, well, let’s see if we can see who it was sent to (originally). And I said, nah, just forget it, I don’t have time, I’ll check later.”
No one believes, now, that it originated at the salon, as seemingly indicated by the return address.
Detectives are working to track back who put the salon's address as the "return address" to have the envelope sent to the salon, and why someone would have done that. And detectives are checking if there have been similar incidents in metro Atlanta in recent weeks.
"It makes you not want to open your mail,” Finnell said, “it’s very scary, actually."
Dunwoody police statistics show that drug overdoses in the city tripled from 2015 through 2022. Now the stylists at Salon Colours are on edge, believing someone may have meant them to harm for no reason they can imagine.
“It is a mystery, it is,” Boaz said.