DRUG OVERDOSES LEAVE 1 DEAD, 21 IN HOSPITALS

A potent, heroinlike drug is being blamed for most of the 22 people
who were sent to area hospitals Saturday in the latest rash of
overdoses, Chicago officials said.

One person died of an overdose, said a Fire Department official,
although it is unclear if that person used the heroinlike drug. Most
of the overdoses were reported on the West Side.

At least nine medical emergency calls originated Saturday morning,
all within about a one-mile radius in the Humboldt Park area and all
within two hours, police and fire officials said.

Shortly before 10 a.m., police got a call reporting two alleged drug
users stumbling from a garage behind a home on the 1100 block of
North Springfield Avenue, said Chicago Police Lt. Diane O'Sullivan.

Around this time, Chicago Fire Department employees responded to
reports of a nearby heroin overdose and saw several men running from
the garage, officials said.

Inside the garage, authorities found three men in a drug-induced
stupor needing medical attention, said John Harding, field officer
for the Fire Department. The two-car garage was littered with about
200 hypodermic needles, baggies of what appeared to be heroin, and
tin foil, officials said.

"It was a shooting gallery, and it was used heavily," Harding said,
referring to users injecting heroin. "This has been an ongoing
problem for the last month. There's been clusters like this across the city."

Authorities believe the drug is a mixture of heroin and the
prescription drug Fentanyl, a painkiller that, when mixed with
heroin, magnifies the potency of straight heroin by about 100 times,
Harding said.

Several residents of the Humboldt Park neighborhood said drug dealers
give free samples in order to hook new users.

Police said they recovered drugs at the scene and have taken them in
for testing. Three people were in custody Saturday afternoon, police
said, but their role in the overdoses was not released. No charges
had been filed by Saturday evening.

The incidents on Saturday follow a rash of heroin overdoses that
swept across the West and South Sides recently. In a 24-hour period
on the South Side last month, 25 people between ages 17 and 73 had
overdosed, including a 51-year-old woman who died at her home.

Police said they are teaming with federal officials to disrupt the
drug's flow into the city.