PARIS – The deaths last weekend of two young women from Bridgton and Oxford are being investigated as possible drug overdoses, police said Wednesday, and officials say the incidents reflect an increasingly serious drug problem in Oxford County.

Rebecca Googoo, 20, of Ray Whitney Road was found unresponsive at 5 p.m. Saturday at the home of Dorian L. Hutchins at 8 Saddlebrook Road in the Blackguard section of Waterford, Capt. Jim Miclon of the Oxford County Sheriff’s Office said.

Opiate poisoning is suspected as the cause, he said.

Miclon said a concerned citizen saw the woman passed out in a car in the McDonald’s parking lot in Paris about 12:30 p.m. Saturday. The citizen took down the license plate number of the woman’s vehicle and notified police, who checked the parking lot but found it gone. An Oxford County deputy was given the registration plate number and traced it to Scott Whitt, 27, Hutchins’ son, who also lives at 8 Saddlebrook Road in Waterford, he said.

The deputy went to the residence, talked for 30 minutes with Googoo, who said she was fine but tired and needed sleep. The deputy also spoke with two others in the house, he said.

The deputy left, and Whitt called 911 after finding her unresponsive around 5 p.m., the captain said. She was pronounced dead at Bridgton Hospital, according to her obituary.

Whitt was arrested Saturday night on a charge of furnishing drugs, an Oxford County jailer said Wednesday. Miclon said the charge stemmed from a previous incident of unlawful furnishing of Methadose tablets in Portland.

Methadose tablets are “basically the same as methadone,” Miclon explained, and are used for pain relief.

Hutchins, 56, was also arrested on a charge of unlawful possession of methadose tablets, Miclon said.

The next day at Oxford, Angela Jutras, 26, of Quail Ridge Apartments on Main Street was found dead at the home of a friend on Colby Shores Road, Police Chief Ron Kugell said.

His department and Maine State Police were called to investigate.

Jutras had stayed overnight Saturday with the friend, Maine State Police spokesman Steve McCausland said, and the friend went to work Sunday morning and found her dead when he returned later in the day.

Kugell said the death is being “looked at as a possible overdose.” He said police were concerned that there might be a “bad batch” of drugs circulating in the area.

The state medical examiner’s office has ordered toxicology tests in both cases, and results will take about a month, McCausland said.

“We have a pretty bad drug problem” in Oxford County, Miclon said. “There’s a lot of overdoses, but not many of them that die. This was back-to-back on the same day, and both females in their 20s.”

Norway Selectman Robert Walker cited the suspected overdoses at a Tuesday meeting of officials from Norway, Paris and Oxford to discuss regionalization of services. He said the deaths were indicative of a “major drug problem” in the area and that it might make sense to revisit a proposal for the towns to share costs of hiring a special drug enforcement agent to combat the problem.

The proposal from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency was turned down by the towns because it came too late in the budget season.

“Right now prescription drug abuse is a priority issue for them, and they’re trying to add new agents to this area,” said Norway’s interim Police Chief Rob Federico. The agent would be employed by the towns, but have all of the drug-related enforcement authority of MDEA agent Tony Milligan, who covers all of Oxford County.

“I thought it sounded like a really great idea,” said Federico, “but it came too late in the season.”

A five-year study by the state medical examiner’s office shows that drug deaths in Maine have increased substantially, rising from 34 in 1997 to 90 in 2001. At the time of the study, projected numbers for 2002 were 161 deaths, four times the 1997 numbers.

Data from 2003 is due to be released by the medical examiner’s office shortly. The study also showed that the rise in drug deaths is due primarily to a rise in accidental, not intentional, overdoses.

Staff Editor Mary Delamater contributed to this story.