HEROIN BLAMED FOR DEATH OF COLLEGIAN BACK IN BOONTON TWP. FOR HOLIDAY

A college student who returned to his Morris County home for the
Thanksgiving holiday was found dead in his bedroom yesterday afternoon,
apparently from a heroin overdose, authorities said.

The body of 19-year-old Patrick Howe, a 1998 graduate of Mountain Lakes
High School, was found by his father in Boonton Township, said police Sgt.
Joseph Morris.

Wesley Howe told police his son had returned to the Old Denville Road home
about 2:30 a.m. after a night on the town, and did not emerge from the
bedroom the next morning or afternoon. The suspicious father entered the
room about 4 p.m., found his son unresponsive and called police, Morris said.

An investigator for the medical examiner's office estimated that Howe had
died between 2:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., Morris said.

Dr. Ronald Suarez, the Morris County medical examiner, pronounced Howe dead
of a possible heroin overdose, according to Capt. Christopher Linne of the
Morris County Prosecutor's Office.

Howe was described as a smart, clean-cut teen with good looks and a quiet
demeanor.

"He was the greatest kid. He wasn't spoiled. So many of the kids around
here are so spoiled," said Tessa Dimin, a Mountain Lakes resident who owns
a distributorship of plastic bags that had employed Howe. "He was honest,
he was friendly, he was real down-to-earth."

Dimin said she trusted Howe and would leave her business in his hands when
she went on vacation. She also said Howe had taken an advanced algebra
course with her daughter and was the smartest student in the class.

Howe, a second-year student at Hudson Valley Community College in Latham,
N.Y., near Albany, had returned to his father's home on Wednesday to take
part in the Thanksgiving festivities, the township police sergeant said.

He left his father's home about 7:30 p.m. with at least one other graduate
of Mountain Lakes High School, the sergeant said. Police were attempting
to reach that friend and others last night.

Although Howe had no tracks on his skin or other outward evidence of heroin
use, a glassine envelope of heroin was found in his wallet in his pants
pocket, the sergeant said. The street value of the drug is $10 to $20.

The drug that killed Howe was likely snorted or ingested instead of
injected by needle, Morris said.

"It's not like it was where an injection is needed," the sergeant said.
"That may be part of the attraction, the power of it."

The drug is especially dangerous because users typically do not know the
strength or purity of what they are getting, he added.

"It doesn't make any sense at all," Morris said. "It's obviously something
highly addictive, and most of the kids are getting it from....a total
stranger."

The death was the second attributed to heroin in Boonton Township within
four years - an 18-year-old Mountain Lakes high School girl died three
years ago, police said - and at least the ninth drug-related death in
Morris county this year. In most cases, heroin was the culprit.

The youngest of those victims, a 16-year-old Hanover Township boy, died in
April.

Overall, the number of overdose deaths in Morris County has declined during
the past two years. In 1998, 20 people died from drug overdoses, down from
21 in 1997.

Few places have been spared. Even rural Warren County has been the scene of
more than a dozen overdose deaths since January 1997.

The deaths rose in tandem with the resurgence of heroin, considered by many
teens and young adults to be a chic alternative to cocaine. One 1998 poll
found that one in four high school seniors uses heroin, up from one in six
in 1992.