Heroin’s deadly toll on youth
Death struck many in N.O. heroin users circle
by Gordon Russell and Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune
Saturday April 12, 2008, 10:26 PM
In just four weeks this year, three people in University of New Orleans freshman Ian Painter’s extended circle of friends died from heroin-related overdoses.
First came Madeleine Prevost, a promising 16-year-old student at Lusher High School whom Painter had met a few days earlier. She died Jan. 6.
Two weeks later, it was Louisiana State University student Pierce Sharai, 19, who had been Painter’s lab partner at Ben Franklin High School and a pal since childhood.
And two weeks after that, a similar fate befell 21-year-old Destrehan High School graduate Zac Moser, a former Loyola student and waiter at Emeril’s Delmonico, with whom Painter shared a mutual friend.
[more]