DRUG COCKTAIL TIED TO TEEN'S DEATH - TOXIC COMPOUND INCLUDES
MARIJUANA

Deep River- It's a frightening scenario: a carload of teenagers on a
cold December night, tainted drugs passed around, a bad reaction,
instant panic.

And a body left on the ground in a vacant lot.

This is what state police believe happened to Deep River resident
Michael Peterson, 19, on Dec. 15. A passing motorist discovered
Peterson's body early the next morning on the state-owned
Messerschmidt Pond property.

Investigators immediately labeled the death suspicious, although an
initial autopsy was inconclusive.

But toxicological results released Friday list the cause of death as a
"clinical history of smoking marijuana laced with volatile compounds."

Peterson is the first known victim along Connecticut's shoreline of a
popular drug cocktail known as "illy." The search is on for the prople
who were with Peterson the night he died, individuals police believe
are also shoreline residents.

Illy debuted on the national scene in 1994 as an especially toxic -
and dangerously misunderstood - drug cocktail. ;It is created by
lacing marijuana cigarettes with various chemical compounds, most
commonly formaldehyde.

The resulting high can be deadly.

Illy began showing up in Connecticut that same year, particularly in
the new Haven and Hartford areas.

"We don't have much contact with it lately," said Lt. Mike Woodson of
the state police Statewide Narcotics Task Force. "It seems to just
pop up here, pop up there and disappear - and then pop up some more."

"It's a serious problem" said Sheryl Massaro, spokeswoman for the
National Institute of Drug Abuse, an arm of the National Institutes of
Health, in Bethesda, Md.

Although the drug has been used across the nation, Massaro points to
particularly high rates in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami and
parts of Texas. Users are mostly teenagers.

"We don't know what the combination of two illicit drugs does in a
person's body. It may create different effects than either one
alone," Massaro said.

"The kids we tend to see still see it as marijuana - just better
marijuana. Most of them don't think it's a big deal," said Sheila
Zimmerman, clinical supervisor of outpatient substance abuse at The
Children's Center in Hamden.

By interviewing Peterson's friends and acquaintances, state police
have pieced together a rough sketch of the last night of his life.

Although the investigation is still ongoing, police consider the
ingestion of illy by Peterson and the dumping of his body to be the
most likely scenario.

"I think something went awry in the back seat of the car, or the front
seat, and he went into some type of vital organ shutdown," said Lt.
John Mannion, commanding officer of the Central District Major Crime
Squad.

"They panicked. They didn't know what to do," Mannion said. "There
was an indication [Peterson] was dragged."

A former junior varsity basketball player at Valley Regional High
School, Peterson lived with his mother, Patricia Peterson, in a Deep
River condominium. He dropped out of high school in 1997, but
remained a familiar figure along Main Street in town.

"I really wish whoever did take his body out there would come forward
and say something because it's tearing the family apart," said Janet
Peterson, Michael's aunt.

The youths who were with Peterson could face criminal charges, the
most serious arising if they sold or provided the drugs that killed
him. They also could provide investigators with a link to the source
of the tainted drugs.

Ben Liberatore, Deep River's resident state trooper, said Peterson was
known by police to smoke and sell marijuana in town, but on a small
scale.

Janet Peterson said her nephew was working through his problems and
had ambitions to return to school and attend college.

"He was a good kid. He was just trying to find his way in the world,"
she said. "He was tough because he thought he had to be tough. He
was going to work through that, given the opportunity, but he was
robbed of that opportunity."