HEROIN: A SMACK OF DEATH

FARMINGTON - When a police officer showed up on Mark Luebeck's East
Farms doorstep the night of May 31, he presumed the police wanted to
speak to his eldest son Chris again.

"They had been here about two weeks prior to that," Mark Luebeck
recalls. "I didn't know if they wanted to shake him down again or
what. I tried not to let (the officer) in, but when he insisted I
knew something was wrong."

The Farmington police officer assigned to visit the Luebecks' home
came to deliver devastating news. Chris had been found dead a short
while before in Batterson Park.

Police believed he died of a heroin overdose. He was 22.

After watching his son for nearly five years repeat the cycle of
losing job after job, steal from his family, get arrested and attempt
to regain control of his life, Luebeck didn't question the cause of death.

"It did surprise me that my son was dead from heroin. I wanted to
think that part of him would come out of it," he said.

Luebeck said his son freely admitted he was part of a group of about
30 youths from Farmington and surrounding towns who used heroin on a
regular basis.

Chris Luebeck was well known to police. In March 2005, he and a
friend, Ryan Nordgren, 21, of Burlington, burglarized a Brickyard
Road business in Farmington to grab tools to pawn for drug money.
Nordgren was also arrested for possession of narcotics when police
found a needle full of heroin as they served the warrant for the
burglary arrest. (Nordgren died of a suspected heroin overdose July
27. He was 21. Nordgren had completed a month-long drug
rehabilitation program on June 29.)

Another one of Chris Luebeck's friends, Christopher Knibbs, 22, was
caught shooting up heroin in the bathroom of the Unionville
McDonald's just days before Luebeck died. A third friend, Craig
MacDonald, 21, was also arrested in the bathroom incident. About a
month after Luebeck's death, MacDonald was arrested for holding up a
Route 4 gas station at knifepoint.

Mark Luebeck said he moved his family to Farmington when his son was
in his early teens. He said they brought their three sons up to play
sports and encouraged healthy activities.

Their 21-year son Michael is on the dean's list at Keene State
College in New Hampshire. Their youngest son Keith, 18, graduated
from Farmington High School June 23.

Mark Luebeck said by the time Chris Luebeck attended middle school in
Plainville, he was getting into minor scrapes with authorities. He
was caught shoplifting, but expressed extreme remorse and promised
not to do it again.

The Beginning To An End

His son finally dropped out of Farmington High School at 16 after an
incident that led to the lockdown of the school.

"Once he dropped out, that was it," his father explains. "You have a
16-year-old kid with nothing to do, that's dangerous."

Mark Luebeck said that although his son was a hard worker, his
addiction would eventually get the better of him every time.

"I don't think heroin knows the difference between an 'A' student and
a drop out," Luebeck said. "Every employer he worked for had such
praise for him. But every time he could get his hands on money, or
something he could steal to get money, he'd get fired."

A Father's Advice

Luebeck said the family now realizes that his son had been exhibiting
signs of drug addiction well before they knew what was happening.

"The number-one thing I would tell parents is, pay attention to your
possessions," Luebeck said. "The first time something's missing, you
think you just misplaced it. But the second time, you need to
understand your kid is stealing items from your home to sell them for drugs."

Luebeck said his son would use any method to get a "head rush" - a
temporary feeling of disorientation or a quick euphoric high -
including bending over repeatedly to make the blood rush to and from his head.

"I found hundreds of spent lighters in his room," he said. "He was
inhaling the Butane, I even found him stealing pain medication I had
for a back injury. He'd get high on sulfur. This was a true physical
addiction."

As Chris Luebeck made his decent into hell, his father said the
family fought hard to support him, including taking him back into the
house even when they knew the chances for his recovery seemed slim.

"We would say to him, 'we know you came home so you could steal from
us,'" Luebeck said. "It was a constant fight. My wife caught him with
a needle in his arm. They tell you what you want to hear and it
sounds good, because you really do want to hear it. We gave him so
many chances."

In the weeks leading up to his death, Chris Luebeck had a span of
eight days in early May when he was arrested by three different law
enforcement agencies. The West Hartford and Farmington police
departments charged him with possession of narcotics. The University
of Connecticut Health Center police charged him with third-degree
larceny. Luebeck said his son had just done a stint living in the
woods in Unionville. But he had come home. As in the past, the family
was loving, but leery. The night he died, Chris Luebeck was about two
blocks from their East Farms' house.

Luebeck said his son was due in court June 2 and he would have likely
been sentenced to four or five years in jail. Six weeks after his
death, an autopsy conducted by the office of the state Chief Medical
Examiner would list the cause of death as heroin toxicity. The report
does not indicate whether it was the quantity or the quality of the
drug that killed him.

"I'm not bitter, I'm terribly hurt," Mark said. "I am bitter that
this drug took his life and right now I'm mad. Nothing compares to
losing a child. I had always hoped that Chris and I would be best
friends. I knew we were going to be that way, but Chris and I never
had a chance."