NEIGHBORS HAD NOTICED HOME IN DRUG CASE

Youths Crowded Plano Site, They Say

PLANO - No matter the time of day or night, scores of clean-cut-looking
youths beat a path to the little blue house on the east side of Plano.

Sometimes they blocked the street with their Mustangs and sport-utility
vehicles as they dashed in, neighbors say.

"I just couldn't believe that it went on as long as it did," said Vickie,
43, who lived across the street. "You knew what was going on there," said
the woman, who asked that her last name not be used.

According to a 50-page federal indictment unsealed Wednesday, the little
blue house was the main distribution point for tens of thousands of dollars
worth of heroin and cocaine sales before it was closed down last spring. It
was an illicit warehouse, officials say, for a business that targeted an
upper-middle-class market, gave away free samples and then watched
indifferently as its addicted customers died.

In response to a string of heroin-related deaths and residents' complaints,
Plano police raided the blue house twice last year, although the
investigation into the drug ring continued until last week.

In the raids of April and May 1997, police arrested the suspected drug
peddlers and turned the house over to its rightful owner, who has since
remodeled and painted it yellow with pale-blue trim.

But the drugs that had been sold there had already made their way down city
streets, into parties and up the noses of several Plano teens who
overdosed, according to last week's indictment, which was handed down by a
grand jury in Sherman.

The indictment names 29 defendants - 16 of them students in Plano high
schools. It reveals how federal and state authorities tracked the lethal
narcotics from south central Mexico to a Collin County ring of suppliers
and then to users who allegedly provided fatal doses to four youths.

Federal officials and police say 24 of the defendants are directly
connected to the 1997 deaths of Milan Malina, 20; George Wesley Scott, 19;
Rob Hill, 18; and Erin Baker, 16. They are among the 18 young people, all
with Plano connections, to die of heroin overdoses since September 1994.

"The people that we charged, we believe the evidence will show, were
actively involved in distributing this drug," said U.S. Attorney Mike
Bradford of the Eastern District of Texas, which includes Plano. "And they
have the same responsibility, in our opinion, of anyone else causing the
injury, deaths and the pain that happened in this community. They should be
held responsible."

Federal authorities say the black tar heroin that killed the four youths
came from the poppy fields of Guerrero, Mexico. The drug ring's alleged
leader, Ecliserio Martinez Garcia, 38, also is from Guerrero.

Mr. Martinez Garcia and three partners - Aurelio Mendez, 36; Salvador
"Chino" Pineda Contreras, 26; and his brother, Jose Antonio Pineda, 22 -
based their Collin County operations in McKinney. They worked out of a
house a few blocks from the city's downtown square.

It was a close-knit operation, authorities said - and profitable. According
to last week's indictment, officials found $54,610 beneath the seat of a
car carrying Mr. Martinez Garcia and Mr. Mendez on Aug. 1, 1997.

The ring had targeted Plano as an untapped and lucrative new market,
according to the indictment.

In the indictment, Mr. Pineda Contreras was quoted as saying that he was
aware of the Plano overdoses and deaths, but "once the heroin was
distributed, it was not his problem."

The ring, officials say, sold a potent drug that had been grown in the
opium fields, harvested and mixed with chemicals, then cooked for hours in
pots that were heated atop crude barbecue grills.

The resulting black tar heroin was brought into the United States every
weekend by plane, boat, trucks and even walked across the border hidden in
the soles of shoes.

The cocaine and raw heroin was diluted - often with the antihistamine
Dormin - and ground into a fine powder in ordinary coffee grinders,
authorities said.

The heroin was put in little capsules that users could snap open and snort.
Dubbed chiva, it was given away at first. Once the quickly addictive
narcotic took hold among Plano's young adults, it was sold for $10 or $20 a
dose through a small group of young men who operated the blue house.

"Fifty to 60 cars a day were making purchases," said James Queen, 53, who
lives next door. "And on the weekends it was twice as many - any time of
the day or night.

"We never did have any confrontations with them," said Mr. Queen, who has
lived in the neighborhood of modest, tidy homes for 24 years. "If their
music was too loud, we'd ask them to turn it down, and they did."

A few blocks away, at an intersection just down the street from the Plano
police station, youths bought drugs in what authorities called an open-air
market. Those drugs also came from the blue house, according to court
records.

After Plano authorities closed down the blue house in May 1997, some of the
dealers moved to hotels in and around Plano, authorities said.

The deaths outlined in last week's indictment began in June 1997 with Milan
Malina, who had dropped out of Plano Senior High School and later earned an
equivalency diploma.

He was out with friends one night when they bought champagne, wine,
marijuana and chiva.

One of the indicted defendants, Christopher Erik Cooper, 19, gave Mr.
Malina the heroin, the indictment states. Mr. Malina, who was asthmatic,
had been off drugs for about two months, his parents said, and these new
drugs made him ill. He vomited, choked and stopped breathing. Four or five
hours later, his panicked friends drove his stiff body to a Plano emergency
room.

Six weeks later, authorities said, Stanley Edward Belch, 20, and Lloyd
Steven Tilghman, 20, purchased heroin from Arturo Meza, 26, and his
brother, Alfonzo Meza, 22, who were part of the group operating the blue
house. All four men were named as defendants in Wednesday's indictment.

Mr. Belch and Mr. Tilghman allegedly distributed the drugs at a party in
Stan Belch's apartment. Rob Hill inhaled them.

Mr. Hill, a recent Plano East Senior High School graduate with plans to
attend community college, was at the party to celebrate with friends who
were going away to school. After he came home early the next morning, he
fell asleep and never woke up.

Mr. Belch's father, Christopher Belch, said his son isn't a "horrible drug
dealer."

"Stanley was an honor roll student; he didn't have any problems with drugs
until his last year at PESH [Plano East Senior High School]. Most of these
kids involved in this aren't bad kids, but they got drawn into this in a
very unusual way," Christopher Belch said.

"Some of the people involved are horrible drug dealers," he added, but his
son and many of the others aren't. "There's both ends of the scale here,"
he stressed.

Mr. Hill's mother, Andrea Hill, said the recent arrests seem to be the only
thing getting through to the young people.

Going to funerals where they see their friends in caskets is not affecting
them, Mrs. Hill said, but "arrest is scaring them more than death."

Sgt. A.D. Paul of the Plano Police Department narcotics unit agreed.

Before the crackdown, the dealers "never had to worry about their
accountability, that their poison might kill somebody," he said. "But now
they have to think about it."

A trial for the 29 people indicted last week is tentatively set for Sept.
21. Mr. Bradford, the U.S. attorney, said the defendants face 20 years to
life in prison if they're convicted. They won't be eligible for parole and
would probably have to serve at least 80 percent of their sentences, he
said.

At first, the arrests of the young people saddened Larry and Donna Scott,
whose son, Wesley, was one of the Plano heroin victims.

Initially, the Scotts said they thought the young people deserved a second
chance.

But after reading the indictment Thursday night, Mr. Scott said, "I've come
to find out that these kids were peddling to umpteen other people and
involved in other deaths since Wesley's. . . . Whatever they get, I think
they deserve."