Some ingredients now known in toxic street drug possibly linked to deaths, sickness

June 08--The GBI said Thursday that synthetic opioids are among the ingredients in an apparently toxic street drug that has been circulating in Middle Georgia, sickening as many as 20 people and possibly linked to four deaths.

Officials have stressed that more tests are needed to determine whether people who died of suspected overdoses had ingested the "yellow pills" in question.

The so-called bad drugs were thought to have been counterfeits of the painkiller Percocet.

Relatives of at least two of the dead, both of whom died this week, have told The Telegraph that they think their loved ones died of overdoses from prescribed drugs. Even so, authorities are considering all recent deaths in the area that appear to be drug-related as having potential connections to the yellow pills.

The GBI now says that lab tests show the pills are "consistent with a new fentanyl analogue," one that investigators here have never seen.

"Due to the nature of the analysis, testing to confirm the full identity of the drug will require additional time," the GBI noted in a statement sent to news outlets Thursday. "The GBI Crime Laboratory continues to make the analysis a priority."

Police and medical authorities have spent much of the week trying to find the source of the toxic pills and warning people who might take them, thinking they are Percocet.

The Telegraph has since learned that at least two locations in Macon, one on the city's east side and another at a house just south of downtown off Ell Street near the Salvation Army, have been identified as places where the pills were sold.

Joe Kovac Jr.: 478-744-4397, @joekovacjr

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