'Deadly Batch' Of Drugs Leads To 3 Overdoses, 1 Serious Injury, 2 Arrests On LI: Police Commissioner

CORAM, NY — A batch of deadly drugs in Coram led to three overdoses and one person seriously injured on Friday — as well as two arrests, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina said in a press briefing Saturday.

At the briefing, Catalina said that those found included a 39-year-old man found dead of an apparent overdose; he was found in a tent in a yard on Judith Dive at 2 p.m. At 7:12 p.m. a female was found in a rear yard on Fife Drive in serious condition after an apparent overdose, Catalina said. A 24-year-old male was found nearby, dead of a suspected overdose, police said. Just three minutes later, a 58-year-old man was found behind a business on Middle County Road in Coram, dead of a suspected overdose, Catalina said.

Due to the spike in overdoses, additional detectives trained in lethal substances were sent out to canvass for witnesses and to alert street sources to the deadly drugs, Catalina said.

Two search warrants were executed at locations in Coram; during the searches at those locations, a gun, as well as 20 grams of powdered fentanyl, as well as other drug paraphernalia and cell phones were found, Catalina said. Two individuals are currently in custody, he said.

Catalina thanked all agencies involved for getting the urgent message out expeditiously Friday night and said he was "pretty certain that getting the message out saved additional lives. Everybody was responsible for getting this message out. That became our priority last night. . . Quite frankly, we wanted to stop the bleeding further."

He added that a further complicating factor was that the people found dead were not opioid users, but instead, crack cocaine users, who did not have the same tolerance, Catalina said. He warned some of the deadly batch of drugs could still be present in the community.

On Friday, the Suffolk County Police Department warned residents about the bad batch of narcotics that had led to the deaths of the three people and the serious injuries of another.

"We are urging people to use caution due to this potentially deadly substance present in the drugs," police said.

The department deployed additional resources to the area, including its medical crisis action team, who are specially trained in advanced life support.

The Suffolk County Police Department's homicide section and narcotics section detectives are
investigating the deaths and continuing to identify the source of the drugs.

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