Fatal Heroin Overdoses

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Oct. 23, 2004, 7:10PM

Fatal heroin overdoses on the rise in Austin

A particularly strong strain is being blamed for surge in deaths

By JIM VERTUNO

Associated Press

AUSTIN - Tracey Crossett graduated from high school early, had a new car, a new boyfriend and planned to study music in college.

She was 17 when her father found her dead at home on Easter Sunday, the needle lying next to her on the floor.

"Everything was going her way," Steve Crossett said. "She was a brilliant kid. A very outgoing kid. ... This has been the worst experience of my life."

Thirty-four people have died so far this year in Travis County from a heroin overdose, up from 23 last year. Crossett was the youngest.

Authorities believe a particularly potent strain of heroin being smuggled into the United States and circulating on the streets of the Texas capital is partly to blame for the highest number of heroin deaths in Austin since 1992.

Potency depends on purity

"We go through this periodically," Austin Police Cmdr. Harold Piatt said. "The heroin being sold on the street is too strong for some people to take, and when you shoot it into your arm, it's too late."

For Tracey Crossett, that moment came on April 11.

A singer and bassist in a rock band, The Quicks, she had played a Saturday night gig in an Austin club, a show her father attended.

Around midnight, she arrived home in the affluent Hill Country suburb of Lakeway. She went into a bathroom, fixed a hit in a syringe and shot up. Steve Crossett found his daughter about 6 a.m.

"When you think of heroin users, you think of old men in a gutter, not a teenager. It was only six or seven months from the first time she used to when she died from it," he said.

Heroin's potency