Federal prosecutors have charged 4 males within the dying of actor Michael Ok. Williams, finest identified for his position as a homosexual robber of drug sellers within the TV collection “The Wire.” In September, the 54-year-old’s physique was present in his Manhattan residence. The health worker dominated that his dying was attributable to “acute intoxication by the mixed results of fentanyl, p-fluorofentanyl, heroin and cocaine.”
New York law enforcement officials arrested the lads, who they are saying have been a part of a Brooklyn drug trafficking crew, for allegedly promoting Williams the deadly dose. U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams says a surveillance video captured a hand-to-hand drug transaction between Williams and Irvin Cartagena sooner or later earlier than the dying. In keeping with a federal grievance, the 39-year-old suspect had bought medication to undercover informants for months previous to Williams’ dying. Cartagena was arrested in Puerto Rico and charged with a narcotics conspiracy, a federal crime.
Additionally anticipated to seem in federal courtroom are Hector Robles, 57, Luis Cruz, 56, and Carlos Macci, 70. In keeping with the prison grievance, all of them “continued to promote fentanyl-laced heroin in broad daylight” outdoors residence buildings in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, “regardless of understanding Williams died after being bought the product.”
“This can be a public well being disaster,” U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams stated in a press release. “And it has to cease. Lethal opioids like fentanyl and heroin do not care about who you might be or what you have achieved. They only feed habit and result in tragedy.”
Williams, raised within the East Flatbush part of Brooklyn, was finest identified for his position as Omar Little on The Wire, HBO’s hit collection within the 2000’s. The present depicted the underworld of medication and crime in Baltimore. His character, an overtly homosexual Black man in that underneath world, was seen as groundbreaking. Williams later appeared within the collection Boardwalk Empire, The Evening Of and Lovecraft Nation. Over his profession, he earned 5 Emmy nominations. Williams was open about his private struggles with drug habit.
After his dying, his Wire co-stars, and lots of others, paid tribute to him on social media. “The depth of my love for this brother, can solely be matched by the depth of my ache studying of his loss,” tweeted Wendell Pierce, who performed Detective William “Bunk” Moreland. “An immensely proficient man with the power to provide voice to the human situation portraying the lives of these whose humanity is seldom elevated till he sings their fact.”
Isiah Whitlock Jr., who performed crooked politician Clay Davis on The Wire, tweeted that Williams was “One of many nicest brothers on the planet with the largest coronary heart. A tremendous actor and soul.”
And David Simon, who created the present and Williams’ character, wrote on Twitter that he was “Too gutted proper now to say all that should be stated. Michael was a fantastic man and a uncommon expertise and on our journey collectively he at all times deserved the most effective phrases. And at the moment these phrases will not come.”