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
Promising futures in what?
They either knew the risks or as adults should have. They rolled the dice and came up losers.
No one's fault except theirs.
Thanks for the answer. We'll have to agree to disagree; it's clear to me that deaths due to tainted alcohol did indeed weigh against the advisibility of continuing Prohibition.
Very smart observations! And street + book smarts people are rare and AWESOME! ;-)
I'll get behind that if the laws are written in such a way that no druggie ever (*ever*) costs me a dime. No welfare, no "treatment," no "education." Period.
If they can do drugs, meet their obligations, and take absolute full responsibilities for the actions, then fine.
Otherwise no deal.
So you must also support banning alcohol until such time as no alkie ever (*ever*) costs you a dime. Right?
I wish the government would get out of the wealth redistribution business, but both R's and D's are in way too deep to stop now.
Appreaciate that.
Give some thought to these scenarios:
You can either do bootleg booze, perhaps laden with methanol, or you can choose Crown Royal. Make a choice.
You can choose to beat the train to the crossing or you can wait a few moments for the train to pass. Again, your choice.
Life is full of choices like these and we all face decisions every day.
Simply put, these girls made the wrong choice.
No one really to blame except themselves.
That's not the choice that Prohibition presented; it presented the choice of bootleg booze, perhaps laden with methanol, or stone cold sobriety. As I said, it's clear to me that deaths due to choosing the former did indeed weigh against the advisibility of continuing Prohibition.
Not if you apply consistent libertarian principles. Although they try to focus the argument to marijuana, the basic pitch is that drugs are your own business, not the body politic's. There is no principled way to stop at just legalizing marijuana.
To be sure, marijuana probably destroys fewer lives that heroin and cocaine. But it's only a matter of degree.
I wish nobody cost me a dime. I wish the government would get out of the wealth redistribution business altogether. I'll donate to charities that I think help the sort of people I wish to help, and I'd ask others to do the same. But as it is now, I pay at government gunpoint for a whole lot of people, organizations, and business concerns that I don't wish to, including the helthcare and incarceration costs of druggies, as well as salaries, toys, and pensions of drug warriors. I particularly dislike paying for those.
Respectfully disagree. The libertarian view of human nature is a rosy and as profoundly incorrect as is the marxist view of human nature--incorrect in a different way, but still incorrect. Drug legalization would, as a result, be a disaster.
Concur
If I wasnt very very sure of the booze I danged sure wouldnt drink it.
Stone cold sober would be the logical choice here.
These girls didn't have the choice to do legal heroin, with controlled purity and dosage. So their death partly rests on the drug warriors for denying that choice. Few people choose bootleg, when you can go to the liquor store and pick up some Night Train. Methanol deaths are way down since Prohibition I ended.
Pot also destroys fewer lives than alcohol or tobacco - but who's counting?
Funny how some "conservatives" think that some of those payouts are a justification for restricting individual liberties, while others aren't.
Stone cold sober would be the logical choice here.
I agree, and I'm not trying to absolve anybody of their responsibility for their own choices. Nonetheless,it's clear to me that deaths due to choosing bootleg booze did indeed weigh against the advisibility of continuing Prohibition.
Understand
In the scenerio I outlined above about the train crossing.
Local families are right now mourning the loss of 3 teenagers who got smacked by BNSF. Lights flashing, bells gates but they still tried to get across.
In the drug thing, the lights are also flashing, bells ringing etc. yet the girls took the risk and they paid.
This could easily be blamed on screwed up laws, drug dealers, whatever, but girls made the choice
That was the strongest anti-drug message I ever got as a child. I didn't ever want to be the person lying in the gutter having a seizure while the rest of New York City walked by and didn't care.
I would rewrite that "Illegal pot also destroys fewer lives than legal alcohol or tobacco." Not so clear to me this would be true were you comparing apples and apples.
But the argument from alcohol is not really a very good one. Just because there is one rotten situation (alcohol legalization and abuse) doesn't mean that we should try to add to it with other rotten situations (marijuana, cocaine and heroin legalization and abuse) for the sake of philosophical consistency.
There are historic reasons that alcohol and tobacco have their hooks into our culture. I don't see why we should facilitate other odious substances getting their hooks in even more than they already have.
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