OVERDOSE DEATHS SPARK CONCERN

STAMFORD - City police are investigating two suspicious drug overdose
deaths in the last 10 days, and New York City police have arrested a
man who was with a Stamford teen when she fatally overdosed in
Manhattan last month, authorities said.

Stamford police are awaiting toxicology reports to determine what
killed two city men in their 30s, one on April 7 and the other on
Thursday, said Capt. Richard Conklin, head of the detective bureau.

New York City-area police are investigating the possibility that a
batch of heroin laced with a potent painkiller entered the local
market in the last month, he said.

But Conklin said it is too early to say that dirty heroin killed the
two city men in the past week.

"It's been reported to be around New York," Conklin said of the
tainted heroin. "But it's premature to say we have it in these cases."

Police in several major cities - including Chicago, Detroit and
Washington, D.C. - reported a spike in deaths last year because of
heroin laced with a the painkiller fentanyl, according to published reports.

Fentanyl is several times more powerful than morphine and gives users
a more intense but far deadlier high.

Heroin also is much purer than in past decades, Conklin said, making
it more dangerous for new users.

Stamford police typically investigate a half-dozen fatal drug
overdoses per year, and some of those are suicides, Conklin said.

Having two overdoses in a single week is a concern, he said; neither
appears to be a suicide.

"It's not that frequent, so when we have more than one, it certainly
piques our interest," Conklin said.

Police have interviewed friends and witnesses who were with the two
victims before they died, Conklin said.

In both cases, witnesses described the victim using a cocktail of substances.

One victim, whom police would not identify, was reportedly taking
several prescription drugs, Conklin said.

A relative of one victim said that police searched their house and
the victim's car looking for drugs.

The relative did not want to be identified and did not want the
victim's name revealed.

In Manhattan, police arrested 23-year-old John Henningsen of
Stamford, who they found in the same hotel room as Natalie Koch, 18,
a Westhill High School senior who died of a drug overdose two weeks
ago at a hotel on West 43rd Street, New York City police spokesmen
said. Her body was found April 5 on a bed, the spokesmen said.

Police are not sure about the relationship between Koch and Henningsen.

Henningsen has been charged with possession of a controlled substance
believed to be heroin, said Detective Kevin Czartoryski, a New York
Police Department spokesman.

Nobody was home Friday at Henningsen's listed address.

It is unclear whether the heroin Koch took was laced with any other
substance or where Koch and Henningsen might have gotten it, police have said.

Stamford police have not been involved in the investigation of Koch's
death, Conklin said.

Toxicology reports for the two fatal overdoses in Stamford last week
will not be finished for several weeks, officials said.