NO POISON IN TWO DEATHS

Two men whose overdose deaths helped lead to a city health alert were
killed by a powerful mix of narcotics and prescription medicine - not
tainted drugs, the city medical examiner said yesterday.

Kristopher Korkowski, 24, a hairdresser, was the first of six people to die
in what authorities earlier this month feared was super potent or poisoned
heroin.

The medical examiner said Korkowski, found Aug. 10 on the couch of his East
Village apartment, overdosed on cocaine and Oxycodone, a pain killer.

The medical examiner also said Anatoli Filistovich, 42, a homeless man
whose body was found Aug. 15 in a Manhattan Mini Storage facility on Spring
Street, overdosed on a combination of heroin, alcohol and Xanax, an
anti-anxiety medication.

A day after the death of Filistovich, the NYPD and city Health Department
issued a citywide alert because six people had died in less than a week in
a small area of lower Manhattan.

The deaths that drew most of the attention were those of best friends
Mellie Carballo and Maria Pesantez, 18-year-old college students who
overdosed on heroin and cocaine in an East Houston Street apartment where
they had partied with two older men.

Test results are not complete in the case of Charles Siker, 37, who was
found slumped over in a portable toilet by the West Side Highway on Aug.
13, and in the case of Ivan Rivera, 24, who was found dead Aug. 12 on the
roof of the East Seventh Street building where he once lived.