Posted on 08/17/2005 11:44:14 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Two college coeds used cocaine with a pair of convicted drug dealers and had fresh needle marks on their arms when they overdosed in a lower East Side apartment, sources said yesterday.
Police believe a bad batch of heroin may have contributed to the deaths of Mellie Carballo and Maria Pesantez, both 18 and with promising futures.
It was unclear who supplied the drugs, but heartbroken relatives of the victims blamed Roberto Martinez, 41, and Alfredo (Tito) Morales, 33, who were with the teens Friday when the students apparently overdosed.
"How is it possible that they are free?" asked distraught father Juan Carlos Pesantez outside the family's home in Jackson Heights, Queens. "With those [criminal] records? With two girls dead?"
Carballo, a second-semester student at Hunter College, and Pesantez, an NYU sophomore, were found about 6 p.m. Friday in an apartment at 484 E. Houston St. Carballo died 20 minutes later and Pesantez died Sunday.
The men admitted doing cocaine with the women, who met at St. Vincent Ferrer High School in Manhattan, a law enforcement source said.
Martinez, who placed a bouquet of red roses in front of the E. Houston St. apartment yesterday, told a different story to the Daily News. He said he came to the apartment, where Morales lives, after Morales called him in a panic.
"I saw [Pesantez] in the bedroom catching a seizure," Martinez said yesterday. "I tried to give her mouth-to-mouth and then I called 911."
Martinez said he met Carballo at a bar about a month ago and didn't meet Pesantez until Friday. He denied giving the women drugs, saying they brought drugs to Morales' apartment.
No one has been arrested and toxicology results are pending.
Morales was convicted in 1995 of possession of cocaine with intent to sell. Martinez, whose is on parole, has 13 narcotics arrests.
The coeds' friends told cops the women wanted to try heroin, a police source said. The friends also told police that Carballo, a former MTV intern, and Pesantez, a pianist and National Honor Society member, had done drugs before.
Relatives dispute that account.
"To my knowledge, she had never experimented with anything," said Celeste Carballo, 21, who shared a room with her sister at the family's West Side apartment.
College students Mellie Carballo (left) and Maria Pesantez, both 18, in an undated photo. The coeds died of suspected drug overdoses in a lower East Side apartment
Photos taken from memorial at http://www.lastnightsparty.com/mellie/index.html
Do you deny it?
Isn't demand a better indicator of the sucess of the criminalization of drugs? Aren't the number of users a better indicator? Isn't decreasing usage a better indicator?
Higher supply and lower price mean nothing. Try again.
It's that 99% of the bad heroin that gives that other 1% of the good heroin a bad name.
So you support banning alcohol?
Where, exactly, did I say that
If you were consistent in your proclaimed principles, you would say that. Do you?
Our difference may be semantic; what principle, in your view, determines which rights government may justly refrain from protecting? Surely not all of them, or government refusal to protect the rights of Jews or blacks would be OK.
I never said anything compels you to say anything... I said it followed logically. If it doesn't then who gets to decide the age limit? Well golly gee, how about... the government! Here's the solution: we'll make coke 'n rock 'n smack 'n crystal and all the other freedom substances completely legal for anyone over the age of 125. Works for me. Glad we could come to agreement.
I don't remember.
Then don't claim I did.
Do you deny that [caveat emptor] was your position?
Yes.
Are you saying that now your position is caveat venditor?
Yes ... there is no right to lie about one's product.
Doesn't feel like your old libertarian, free-wheeling, market viewpoint
Feel free to produce an old quotation from me that contradicts what I'm currently saying. If you can't, quit with the weasely insinuations that I'm contradicting myself.
OK... you now owe me 2 paper towels, two squirts of windex, and about 1 Tbs of coffee!
If we had those numbers rather than merely self-reporting, sure. And even self-reported numbers show ups and downs, with no consistent trend for over a decade.
Higher supply and lower price mean nothing.
In the absence of evidence for lowered demand, they do. Isn't lowering supply a goal of the WOD?
These poor girls were only educated in the sense that they thought they could get away with stepping over the line and 'being dangerous'. They believed they could easily return to their 'normal' lives, play it both ways.
They were wrong.
There are those who handle alcohol responsibly. How many needle junkies can claim that? for how long?
"OK... you now owe me 2 paper towels, two squirts of windex, and about 1 Tbs of coffee!"
I'll be right over. I like my eggs over easy.
Hey, quit screwing up parced logic for desired outcomes with practical reality. It's distracting KYR from the axe grinding.
Deal! I have some fresh Bob Jones sausage links in the cold cut and cheese drawer I can throw on as well. I like cheese; do you like cheese?
There is no sense in debating people that like drugs. I heard a joke about an old man that was listening to a sermon at a church meeting. He was up front so he could hear the sermon. The preacher was speaking about what was considered to be sins. The man would yell "amend preacher" to everything that was said until the subject of chewing tobacco came up. The man jumped up and left the church building. Someone asked him later why he had left. He said that he had been listening to a fine sermon until the preacher started getting meddling. I think we are all like that. We can not see our own problems and get angry if someone points them out to us.
As for me personally, I am very much against any kind of drug abuse. I believe people use it as a crutch to run away from their problems. I have heard of people that drank trying to drown their troubles. I have noticed that the troubles swim very well and quite often call in more troubles just to keep them company.
The original Coca Cola did contain abstracts of Cocaine. It also contained Kola nuts. The nuts contained large amounts of caffeine. The name Coca Cola was very descriptive, Coca for cocaine and cola for Kola. That is why they used the slogan "the pause that refreshes".
Cocaine and even opium was used in many patent medicines. Anhydrous Morphine (derived from Opium) was even an ingredient in Paregoric medicine that was given to infants to treat colic. The baby would quit crying and go to sleep. Then the parents could get some rest. It was even sold over the counter at drug stores. It was banned from open sale because there were so many people getting addicted. I do know that some doctors were still giving prescriptions for it 35 years ago.
Do a search on the net for Cocaine. There is a lot of very interesting information about it.
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
pinging me
After noting that this latest argument of yours has nothing to do with who you work around, I'll say that we'll never know how many because they're taking care to be the users we don't find out about (and that since part of slipping into irresponsibility is ceasing to come to work, you should be glad of it).
No, it goes beyond semantics.
I say humans have full rights from the moment of birth -- you say they don't. That's not semantics.
"what principle, in your view, determines which rights government may justly refrain from protecting?"
Remind me again what this has to do with two dead coeds?
Who here likes drugs?
It was banned from open sale because there were so many people getting addicted.
Actually, today's addiction rates are higher. The War On Drugs fails again!
We'll never know if you continue to dodge my question, the answer to which would tell us: "what principle, in your view, determines which rights government may justly refrain from protecting?"
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