DETROIT TEEN'S LIFE SLIPS AWAY IN DRUG DEN

Bloomfield Township teen Lauren Jolly clung to life for three hours
after snorting a lethal dose of heroin in a Detroit drug house, but
police say the man running the place wouldn't allow anyone to take
her to a hospital, the Free Press has learned.

After an ice bath and CPR failed to revive Jolly, 17, the night of
May 24, the man, Donald Coleman, carried her to her car, police said.
He allegedly then ordered another drug customer to drive Jolly
elsewhere in Detroit, park the car and leave the body inside. Coleman
gave the woman $30 to return by cab, police said.

But the woman, who is an admitted prostitute, instead took Jolly to
St. John Hospital, where the Birmingham Groves High School junior was
pronounced dead. When police arrived at the hospital, the woman lied
and said she had found the girl passed out in a car near 8 Mile, police said.

The Free Press also learned Jolly had told police about the drug
house six weeks before her death, when she was arrested in connection
with having heroin laced with fentanyl, a painkiller suspected in the
deaths of many area drug users in recent weeks.

Jolly's parents could not be reached for comment Tuesday and no one
answered the door at their home.

New details in the case emerged Tuesday as Coleman's brother, James
Edgar Coleman, 36, waived a detention hearing in U.S. District Court
in Detroit on federal charges of possession with intent to distribute
heroin and crack cocaine.

Donald Coleman, 26, was being held in Detroit on a parole violation,
police said. Both brothers have addresses in Detroit, police said.

Officers from the Detroit Police Major Crimes Division and federal
agents arrested the Coleman brothers Saturday night in a raid at the
house where Jolly died, on Keating near John R and 7 Mile. Eleven
other people inside the house were ticketed for loitering in a drug
den, police said. Six of them gave residences in Detroit's suburbs.

No one has been charged in connection with the teenager's death, but
federal and local investigations are continuing in the possible roles
of both men and whether Jolly's overdose was caused by a deadly mix
of heroin and the painkiller fentanyl. Authorities have blamed
fentanyl -- which is many times more powerful than heroin -- for at
least 83 deaths in Wayne and Oakland counties this year.

Toxicology reports were pending on Jolly's cause of death, which
police have preliminarily called an overdose. But police said
fentanyl-laced heroin had been sold from the house where she died.
Both Coleman brothers have prior drug convictions.

Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe said Tuesday that Jolly had
been arrested in April in connection with possession of heroin laced
with fentanyl.

Detectives from a regional task force had followed her and an
unidentified friend from Groves High School to the Suez Motel at 8
Mile and Dequindre in Warren, where Jolly and her male friend
appeared to make a drug buy on April 12.

Police pulled them over at 12 Mile and Southfield Road in Lathrup
Village, found heroin and arrested them. Jolly and her friend wrote
confessions, and authorities used the information to obtain search
warrants on the hotel and on the Keating drug house in April, McCabe said.

McCabe said Tuesday he did not think Jolly's cooperation with police
in April, and her identification of the drug house, had any
connection with her death in May, though police are still investigating.

The investigation into Jolly's death picked up steam over the weekend
when state and federal officials spoke with several people connected
with the drug house, including the prostitute, who told police she
had lied earlier because she was afraid of Donald Coleman.

The woman now described going to the house on Keating to buy heroin
and finding Jolly sitting unconscious in the dining room.

The woman told police that she learned that after Jolly took the
heroin, Donald Coleman and others had put Jolly in the bathtub with
ice cubes to try to revive her. Her wet clothes had been removed.

The woman said that the teenager eventually appeared to stop
breathing. She and Donald Coleman then tried CPR, unsuccessfully, police said.

There were about eight people inside at the time, police said.
Several people volunteered to take Jolly to the hospital before she
died, but Donald Coleman wouldn't allow it, police said.

After Jolly died, Donald Coleman grew frantic and came up with the
plan to dump her body, the woman said.

Fentanyl is a synthetically manufactured pain medication that is 50
to 100 times more powerful than morphine. In its legally prescribed
form, it typically is administered through a patch, an oral lozenge
(called a fentanyl lollipop) or through injections. It often is
prescribed to cancer patients. Authorities say it is combined with
heroin to increase the high.

Local medical professionals say overdose victims can be saved if
treated quickly.

"Heroin and opiates in general can stop your respiratory system and
brain damage can result," said Dr. Patricia Nouhan, an emergency
doctor at St. John Hospital, where Jolly's body was taken. "You can
put them on reversal medication intravenously and they come back from
the dead literally," she said. But she added that the medication's
effectiveness can be compromised by the addition of fentanyl.

Heroin laced with fentanyl has appeared on the streets in cities from
Chicago to St. Louis to Pittsburgh. It has drawn together local,
state and federal law enforcement officials to fight it and even
extended to Mexico, where a fentanyl lab was raided by Mexican
authorities several weeks ago.

The growing threat also has gotten the attention of the Bush
administration. Last week, Scott Burns, the deputy drug czar,
attended a conference on fentanyl in Chicago.