Pubdate: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 Source: Times-Picayune, The (LA) Copyright: 2004 The Times-Picayune Contact: http://www.nola.com/t-p/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/848 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) ADDICTION CENTRAL A woman watching police investigate the quadruple murder at 1723 Egania St. this week saw a reflection of herself in the carnage. "It could have been me inside there," she told a reporter. "That's where everybody gathered to do their thing." Doing their "thing" is the woman's euphemism for getting high. Everybody involved in Tuesday's slaying -- the four victims and the one suspect police have arrested -- seems to have been deep in the clutches of drug addiction. The massacre reveals the desperate circumstances so many people -- and not just those in this corner of the 9th Ward -- find themselves in. Police say suspect Christopher Browder, 20, was looking for money to nurse a $100-a-day heroin habit. Known to police as a petty thief and burglar, it was assumed that the young man was more of a danger to himself than to others. Now police say he killed a 25-year-old mother of two who lived a block away from the site of the homicides, a 54-year-old man who slept in the darkened house to avoid sleeping outdoors, a 28-year-old Raceland man who came to New Orleans two weeks ago after fighting with his girlfriend and a 25-year-old man who apparently lived out of town. Another suspect remains at large. Police have been saying for years that a new, more powerful strain of heroin is driving New Orleans' murder rate. They can certainly hold up this crime as proof. Getting heroin off the street needs to remain one of their top priorities, lest we keep losing our residents to the cemeteries and to the penitentiaries. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin