This archive report was first published on 10 August 2019.
Published on August 10, 2019, a tragic story unfolded in the Bronx, highlighting the devastating effects of the opioid crisis.
According to her sister, Tiffany Rojas, the woman was not her only girlfriend, and she suffered greatly as a result.
Her sister recalled finding her on the couch, crying, talking on the phone, and smoking, describing her as 'my poor sister.'
By 2017, the woman had lost her job at a hair salon and stopped paying her share of the rent at the subsidized apartment she had moved into on Revere Avenue.
Despite regularly seeing her 12-year-old son, who had moved in with her mother, the stretches between her visits grew longer.
Her brother, who wished to remain anonymous due to past threats from her dealers, shared that she had turned up limping and with bruises on her face on one occasion, and another time, she called saying she had been kidnapped by dealers and needed hundreds of dollars.
A family friend, a taxi driver who had a crush on the woman, had given her rides to appointments with people he later realized were her dealers.
The driver revealed that one dealer had offered to give her medication to wean her off street drugs if she moved in with him, but she refused.
Another dealer threatened her, and the taxi driver and the dealer almost came to blows.
She suffered a brutal beating at the hands of three women, which left her walking with a cane for a time, according to the driver.
Her drug of choice remained painkillers, which cost around $10 per pill on the street in the Bronx.
