Two men were arrested on drug charges over the weekend after a surge of heroin overdoses on Chicago’s West Side saw 74 people overdose in 72 hours last week.
Alfonso Sylvester, 24, of the 400 block of North Lavergne, was arrested just after 12:30 p.m. Saturday in the 300 block of East 47th Street. He faces a felony narcotics charge and received 16 traffic citations, including one for fleeing from police, authorities said.
Mario Wofford, 26, of the 1500 block of South St. Louis, was arrested just before 11:30 a.m. Friday in the 3900 block of West Congress Parkway, police said.
He faces a felony charge for manufacturing heroin with the intent to deliver it.
Prosecutors claim the pair alegedly tried to sell an undercover officer $720 worth of heroin on the West Side Friday, the Chicago Tribune reported. Sylvester allegedly fled the scene, leading police on a chase before escaping on the Eisenhower Expressway.
The charges come as officials searched the city's West Side for the source of an "extremely strong batch of heroin" that may have been laced with a painkiller.
Last week, city officials reported the number of overdose cases on the city’s West Side had jumped from more than 20 in 24 hours to more than 70 in 72 hours.
Local
Police recovered a sample that may have been heroin laced with the painkiller fentanyl purchased at two West Side locations. Langford said it was not clear how much fentanyl had been added to the heroin batches.
Police said multiple law enforcement agencies were working "to identify the source of the extremely strong batch of heroin."
The painkiller was in the spotlight in the in the mid-2000s when dozens of people died from fentanyl-related overdoses.
