Coroner: Heroin overdose killed women found foaming at the mouth

Toxicology tests have solved the mystery of two Columbus women found dead Sept. 28 with foam around their mouths.

They died from heroin overdose, Muscogee County Coroner Buddy Bryan said Sunday.

Bryan said his office just last week received reports from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime laboratory in Atlanta, which determined the two died accidentally from heroin toxicity.

Tanyeka Lashay Nickerson, 31, and Kearia Robinson, 28, were found that Sunday in a bedroom at Apt. 903-D of 1990 Cusseta Road, Bryan said. They were pronounced dead at 6:36 a.m.

Investigators suspected they had been using illegal drugs, but the froth at their mouths raised suspicions that whatever drugs they used might have been laced with poison, Bryan said.

Their cause and manner of death remained under investigation until state crime lab technicians could complete the toxicology tests, he said.

Bryan said cases of heroin overdose have become increasingly common lately, with eight to 10 cases reported in 2014, five of them “right in a row” toward year’s end:

“We had five right in a row toward the end of last year, which is kind of like really weird in the way we were getting them toward the last quarter of the year.”

Users appear unaccustomed to the purity of the drug now available, he said.

“It’s my understanding that the heroin that’s coming in now is such a high grade, yet people are taking the same amount as they were taking when it was a lower grade,” he said.

This story was originally published January 18, 2015 at 3:12 PM with the headline "Coroner: Heroin overdose killed women found foaming at the mouth."