OUTSIDE MEDIA SPOTLIGHT, ADDICTS DIE IN OBSCURITY

When Jacqueline Johnson died of an apparent heroin overdose, she did so
quietly, friends and family said.

There were no cameras and no police investigations. An ambulance arrived at
795 Franklin Delano Roosevelt Dr. in the Jacob Riis Houses on the night of
June 25 and rushed the mother of four to Beth Israel Medical Center. Soon
after, they said, she succumbed to a ruptured brain vessel.

Yesterday, reporters came to the red-brick housing project on the Lower
East Side, asking about what police said was a rash of suspicious drug
overdoses in a half-mile radius around the houses.

It was surreal news to many who live in the Riis Houses. They had read
newspaper accounts of two 18-year-old college students who did not live in
the adjoining Lillian Wald Houses but apparently overdosed there Friday,
possibly, residents speculate, on heroin from the same source that killed
Johnson.

"It took the death of two college students to find out what was going on,"
said a woman who identified herself as China, 54, a friend of Johnson's.
"Nobody did an investigation for her."

At a news conference yesterday, police officials said the tainted heroin
may have claimed as many as six lives. Johnson's name never came up. Nor
did that of Mary Monett Jackson, 34. Even so, police acknowledged there may
be more victims.

A spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, Ellen Borakove, confirmed
their deaths but said the cause of death was pending a toxicology report.

Jackson died Aug. 2 at a building on Avenue D, Borakove said. A mother of
five, she also struggled with drugs for much of her life, friends said.

Two months later, Johnson's nephew said his family was ready to put her
death behind them, no matter how she died.

"To have this much of a body count, just for dope, it doesn't make sense,"
he said. He declined to give his name because of the nature of his aunt's
death.

"I knew it would eventually happen," he added. "There's a 50/50 chance of
living when you shoot dope, period."