Pubdate: Wed, 31 Aug 2005
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2005 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: Rocco Parascandola
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1346/a07.html

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.
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