Matt Capelouto’s daughter, Alex, was home for winter break from Arizona State University in 2019 when she died after buying and taking the pill. She didn’t get a chance to open her Christmas presents. 

One month into the pandemic in 2020, Bridgette Norring’s teenage son was found unconscious in his bed by his brother. 

Luca Manuel was just 13 when he took the drug the afternoon before he was supposed to start back at school for the first day of in-person classes since lockdown. His mother, Amanda Faith Eubanks, held her son for the last time as he was being put into the coroner’s van inside of a body bag.

Pointing to an “alarming” increase in fatal overdoses, the Drug Enforcement Administration warned on Monday that a record number of the 9.5 million fake prescription pills it had seized in the United States this year contained lethal amounts of fentanyl.

Michael K. Williams, the actor who brought a hard-edge charisma to his portrayal of Omar Little, the sawed-off-shotgun-wielding stickup man on the pioneering HBO series “The Wire,” was found dead on Monday in his home in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. He was 54.

SOUTHOLD, N.Y. — The 911 calls to the Southold Town Police Department began to pour in on a Wednesday. And for three days they did not stop.

CBS NEW YORK– Authorities say three men face charges in a large-scale narcotics operation based out of the Bronx. Authorities say they seized nearly 40 pounds of what’s believed to be heroin and fentanyl as part of the bust. The drugs were stamped with a variety of brand names, including “COVID-19,” “Drop Dead,” “Straight Up,” “Waze,” “Thunder Cats” and many more.

As Covid raged, so did the country’s other epidemic. Drug overdose deaths rose nearly 30 percent in 2020 to a record 93,000, according to preliminary statistics released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s the largest single-year increase recorded.

Over the course of nearly four hours of opening statements on Tuesday, attorneys for New York described the opioid industry as one that pushed pills and chased profits while disregarding the human toll of addiction, their initial salvo in the first opioid case in the country where a jury rather than a judge will decide the outcome.

A long-term wiretap investigation uncovered a sophisticated network of alleged narcotics traffickers who distributed fentanyl, heroin and cocaine in New York City, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania during COVID-19, according to the city Special Prosecutor’s Office.

She screamed and cried, banged on the dashboard, begging her husband to drive faster, faster, faster toward her brother lying face-down on his bedroom floor.

NEW YORK POST- Cops snagged 25 pounds of cocaine and $350,000 in a Bronx drug bust they say disrupted a large-scale narcotics distribution network with possible ties to Puerto Rico.

NBC New York-  Authorities seized more than 100 pounds of cocaine branded with “CR7” – the nickname for international soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo – from a luxury residential complex in Queens, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

He won’t beat this heat with a kiddie pool! A Washington Heights man who set up an inflatable pool to help residents cool off during last summer’s heatwave has been busted for running an extensive drug-dealing operation out of his apartment building, authorities said.