Gang members charged after week of heroin overdoses

This arrest of these two men came after Chicago Police working in tandem with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration combed the city’s West Side.

Authorities have been flooded with reports of heroin overdoses since the outbreak started last week, which is reflected in the Tribune’s overnight log of police scanners this weekend.

A statement put out by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence notes that between 2005 and 2007, “more than 1,000 USA deaths were attributed to fentanyl, many of them in Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia. The surge of deaths ended when the lab was identified and dismantled, the DEA said”.

According to a report by the Chicago Tribune, a few patients reached the Mount Sinai Hospital with needles still stuck in their arms.

Alfonzo Sylvester, 24, and Mario Wofford, 26, both well-known team users, offered usd720 of drug to a licensed officers on the West Side Friday, prosecutors said – the exact region wherein the unsafe illegal substances were actually often ordered.

It isn’t clear whether or not the heroin the men allegedly sold was laced with the possibly fatal fentanyl.

The Chicago Tribune reported that Chief Mary Sheridan, head of the Fire Department’s emergency medical services division, announced Friday that paramedics and other first responders have been using a single dose of Narcan, used as a heroin antidote, to stabilize victims where they are found. She said they would now be given extra doses to carry.

Sylvester appeared in the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Sunday over charges of possession of heroin with the intent to deliver and aggravated fleeing and eluding police.

The men are members of the Unknown Vice Lords street gang, according to court records.

Wofford was arrested at the scene but Sylvester was able to drive away, police said.

Because Wofford had no prior violent crimes in his history, he was held on $10,000 signature bond on his charge which was possession with intent to deliver.