HEROIN SUSPECTED IN DEATH OF KELLER MAN

KELLER -- Police are investigating the collapse and subsequent death early
yesterday of a 36-year- old man who they say may have overdosed on heroin.

Bruce Allen Fann collapsed about 4 a.m. in the living room of his home in
the 1200 block of Robin Drive in Keller and was found a few minutes later
by his wife, Kathy, police said.

"She heard him scream and went to check on him," Keller Police Chief Bill
Griffith said.

Emergency personnel were unable to revive Fann with cardiopulmonary
resuscitation at the Fanns' home, police said. Fann was taken to Baylor
Medical Center at Grapevine, where he was pronounced dead at 5 a.m., a
spokesman with the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office said. Fann's
death is the second this week in Northeast Tarrant County that authorities
suspect was heroin- related.

Kathy Fann, 37, told police that her husband had recently received
treatment for problems with heroin and cocaine, Griffith said. Bruce Fann
had "some bruises on his arms that might have confirmed that history,"
Griffith said.

Investigators "think that [heroin] might be a possibility," he said. But
Fann "could have turned out to have had a heart attack," Griffith said.
Family members at the Fanns' home declined to comment yesterday.

No drugs or drug paraphernalia were found during a police search of the
Fanns' home, Griffith said. A preliminary cause of death is pending, a
medical examiner's spokeswoman said.

Results from toxicology tests might not be available for up to six weeks,
Griffith said.

Bedford authorities are awaiting results of toxicology tests on Eric Lee
Higgins, 20, whose parents found his body early Monday in the family's home
in the 3300 block of Channing Lane in Bedford.

Higgins' uncle has told police that he believed that Higgins was under the
influence of heroin. Investigators were expecting results of Higgins'
toxicology tests yesterday but were told that the results will not be
available until Monday at the earliest, said Mike Mason, a captain with
Bedford Department of Public Safety.

If Higgins died of a heroin overdose, he would be the third former L.D.
Bell High School student since November to die from using the drug. Five
other people, including 13-year-old Derrick Dowse of Bedford, have died of
heroin overdoses in Northeast Tarrant and Denton counties since October 1996.

Fann's death came a year to the day after Derrick died of a heroin overdose
in his home.

Derrick, who was an honor student and had completed his seventh-grade Drug
Abuse Resistance Education program at Central Junior High School in Euless
the month before he injected heroin, died Jan. 2, 1997, after popping pills
and drinking vodka with his stepbrother, police said.

In November, another Bedford resident, James Heath Noble, 22, died of a
heroin overdose after injecting the drug at a Hurst home. A friend of
Noble's, Aaron McGee, 21, of Grapevine also died of a heroin overdose in
November. The two had been classmates at Bell High.

Derrick's death ]was a wake-up call to drug experts, school officials and
community leaders, who have combined efforts to fight the encroachment into
the suburbs of the once-urban narcotic.

Drug experts and police have said that heroin has become much more potent
than heroin that entered the United States in previous decades.

"All law enforcement agencies, definitely in the Metroplex and even broader
jurisdictions ... all recognize we have a problem with drugs," Griffith
said. "Heroin is beginning to come back more aggressively."