Always Listen to the SMURFS!

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Student’s death calls attention to rising heroin problems

By Stan Maddux
For The News-Dispatch

Published: Thursday, June 2, 2011 5:09 PM CDT
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LA PORTE — The recent death of a girl set to graduate from La Porte High School this weekend has local authorities calling attention to a problem they believe is becoming worse: heroin.

After a teen girl from La Porte died from a drug overdose this past week, La Porte Police Chief of Detectives Adam Klimczak said heroin use has been on the rise here the past few years.

Despite law enforcement aggressively going after dealers, the drug seems to be gaining in popularity, especially among those in their teens and 20s, Klimczak added.

”A whole new group of younger kids are getting involved with this drug that can kill them the first time they use it,” Klimczak said.

La Porte County Coroner John Sullivan called heroin the biggest overall issue facing the city and county.

”This is an ever-increasing problem in La Porte,” he said. “Anybody that says it isn’t, they got their heads in the sand.”

Sullivan said it appears the 19-year-old from La Porte went to Chicago on Saturday with friends to get heroin and wound up in a hospital there from possibly overdosing.

After leaving the hospital, she was dropped off at her Fox Street apartment, where her mother later found her dead just inside the doorway in the living-room area.

Sullivan said while more than one drug was found in the girl’s system, heroin was the predominant substance detected in her bloodstream.

”It’s beyond sad. She was a beautiful girl. She just went to the prom last weekend, and now they have to make arrangements to bury her,” Sullivan said.

Klimczak said especially risky is when a user of diluted heroin unknowingly receives pure heroin. Without a high tolerance, pure heroin, once in the bloodstream, can stop the heart almost instantly.

”It kills you right there,” Sullivan said. “Stay away from the stuff. I say it’s probably the most critical problem we face in our community.”

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There had to be something better she could have been doing with her time.