San Francisco police arrested four suspected dealers in connection with the fatal overdose of a 16-year-old student.
The busts, carried out last Tuesday and Wednesday, targeted Nicholas Wallace, 46, Sharonee Hyson, 44, Leander Pitts, 46, and Starr Lamare, 39, according to Police Chief Derrick Lew, who announced the arrests Monday. All four were booked into San Francisco County Jail on charges including possession for sale of narcotics and firearms offenses.
The case began with the April death of Dante Lacourte, a local teenager who swallowed a counterfeit pill laced with cychlorphine, a synthetic opioid that has only recently surfaced in the city. His mother, Christina Lacourte, said she discovered him dead in his room when she went to wake him for school.
“It just takes one pill,” she said.
Investigators linked the four suspects to Dante by following leads found in his room on the day he died. Officers first identified the deadly pills, then searched the boy’s phone to zero in on the dealers believed to be his source.
Undercover officers subsequently called the alleged pushers and purchased pills laced with the deadly substance to build their case. Police then executed raids on three San Francisco homes last week, seizing roughly 20,000 pills suspected of containing cychlorphine.
The first two arrests came last Tuesday, Sept. 8, when police busted Wallace at his O’Farrell Street home and confiscated 34 pills believed to be oxycodone plus a quantity of cocaine. Hyson, a parolee, was also collared in that raid after officers caught him holding 11.7 grams of cocaine base and a loaded gun.
The following day, cops hit the homes of Pitts and Lamare, finding more than 20,000 pills including counterfeit Xanax, oxycodone, hydrocodone, cyclobenzaprine and other narcotics, including fentanyl. The haul also included 68.5 grams of MDMA, 6.5 grams of black tar heroin, a semi-automatic assault rifle, a semi-automatic pistol and $2,267 in cash.
Cychlorphine, the substance that killed Dante, is roughly ten times stronger than fentanyl and was first identified in the US just two years ago.
“The first time DEA saw it was in 2024 at one of our labs down in Florida,” Bob Beris, special agent in charge of the DEA San Francisco Field Division, said.
Beris warned that cychlorphine is not confined to pills alone and can be hidden across multiple street drugs, making detection and avoidance especially difficult.
“It can be mixed into a pill. It can be sold as a powder. It can be mixed in with cocaine. It can be sold as cocaine. Again, just because we haven’t seen some of these examples yet doesn’t mean it’s not out there,” he said.
Public health experts say current drug-checking tools may not detect cychlorphine. The substance also resists overdose reversal drugs like Narcan, requiring multiple doses to be effective.
Also present in Dante’s pill was isotonitazene, known on the streets as ISO, a counterfeit opioid up to 100 times more powerful than fentanyl. San Francisco Health Department officials had issued an alert the month Dante died, warning that “even a single pill can contain a lethal dose.”
A video posted online showed throngs of stupefied users reeling from ISO’s effects in the city’s Tenderloin district. In footage created by Manhattan Institute writer Christopher Rufo, addicts are seen stooping over from the powerful drug and lying corpselike on the sidewalk.
Rufo said a dealer told him ISO is becoming more popular on the streets.
“For the last ten years, it’s been an arms race for increasing the strength of opioids, from heroin to fentanyl, and now, to ISO,” said Rufo. “It’s devastating California cities.”
Chief Lew said the SFPD will continue following leads uncovered through the investigation and pursue any additional arrests.
“Our investigators will stop at nothing to ensure deadly narcotics are taken off our streets and individuals who peddle them are arrested and held accountable,” he said.
