TAINTED HEROIN IS SUSPECTED IN DEATH OFFICIALS SAY

Drug Use

Wilkes-Barre Has Seen A Spike In Overdoses In Past Week, Including Five Friday

"I've been here 12 years and I've never dealt with this many
overdoses in one week." Sgt. Joe Novak

WILKES-BARRE - A man who died of an apparent drug overdose Friday
afternoon may have been using a tainted batch of heroin that's been
blamed for more than 100 fatal overdoses nationwide in recent months,
the county coroner said.

A rash of drug overdoses broke out across the city this week,
according to police and medics, who reported five overdoses on Friday
alone, one of which was fatal.

"I've been here 12 years and I've never dealt with this many
overdoses in one week," said Wilkes-Barre police Sgt. Joe Novak.

Police would not release the name of the man who died Friday, and
neither would Luzerne County Coroner Dr. John Consalvo, pending
notification of the family.

Wilkes-Barre Fire Chief Jacob Lisman declined to give specific
numbers, but he said the city has responded to an unusually high
number of drug overdoses this week. One police officer said city
medics have responded to approximately 15 overdoses in the past seven days.

City police and medics responded to the Citizens Bank Parkade next to
Boscov's Department Store at around 3 p.m. Friday for a report of two
men overdosing on heroin, Novak said.

A woman who was with the two men called 911, and when medics arrived
one of the men was reacting badly, first struggling with medics and
then falling in and out of consciousness, Novak said. Police were
called in to assist and he was taken by ambulance to Wilkes-Barre
General Hospital, where he later died.

Consalvo said he thinks the man was using a form of heroin laced with
fentanyl, a legal painkiller that some experts say is 80 times more
potent than morphine and can be fatal in large doses.

Fentanyl-laced heroin started turning up in major U.S. cities in
April, and officials blamed the potent mix for dozens of deaths in
Philadelphia, South Jersey and Delaware.

Consalvo said he won't be certain the heroin used in Friday's deadly
overdose was fentanyl-laced until he gets the results of a toxicology
test, which could take several weeks. The toxicology test Consalvo
ordered is quantitative, he said, which will reveal each different
narcotic in the man's system at the time of his death, including the
amount of fentanyl. The tests done Friday on overdose patients by
area hospitals, on the other hand, do not show specific substances
such as fentanyl.

Consalvo added that the tests results will come too late to help
inform anyone who chooses to shoot up in the coming weeks.

"The word should be out there that anyone who is engaging in
recreational drug use should be very careful."