Speedball cocktail killed coeds

New York Daily News

The two college coeds who overdosed in an ex-con's Manhattan apartment were killed by a powerful mix of heroin and cocaine - not tainted drugs, the city medical examiner revealed yesterday.

The distraught mother of one of the teens, Mellie Carballo, could not bear to discuss the toxicology results yesterday.

"I just hope that parents get the message," Mariel Carballo said, her voice cracking in the family's West Side apartment. "You have to work hard to keep your children safe."

Police and health officials had warned the public that Mellie Carballo, Maria Pesantez and four others found dead in downtown Manhattan between Aug. 10 and Aug. 15 may have overdosed on the same batch of poisonous heroin.

A seventh potential overdose - a woman who collapsed Sunday in Roosevelt Park on Grand St. - also was being reviewed by the medical examiner's office.

But tests on Carballo and Pesantez, both 18, showed no signs of contaminates or additives in the drugs found in their bodies, officials said.

The teens' deaths were ruled an accidental overdose by heroin and cocaine - a combo known as a speedball. Toxicology results on the other victims had not been completed yesterday.

Carballo, a Hunter College freshman from Manhattan, and Pesantez, an NYU sophomore from Queens, had been partying Aug. 12 with two ex-cons - Alfredo Morales, 33, and Roberto Martinez, 41 - just before they died. The ex-cons are in police custody on drug charges.

Robert F. Moore and Alison Gendar