LI Drug Dealer Gets 3-to-6 Years In 2 Heroin Overdose Deaths: DA

GREAT NECK, NY — A drug dealer from Great Neck who once bragged he could not be charged in the overdose deaths of two people due to good Samaritan laws was sentenced yesterday to three-to-six years in state prison, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Thursday.

Justin Lum pleaded guilty in November to criminally negligent homicide and third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substances for two separate incidents resulting in the deaths of his girlfriend, Patricia Collado, 28, of Brooklyn, and an acquaintance, Calvin Brown, 24, of Bayside, who died after they were re-supplied with heroin by him.

Katz said Lum provided the drugs to the Collado and Brown knowing that they had nearly died before of drug overdoses. “This is the first time in the borough of Queens an admitted drug dealer has been held criminally responsible for the deaths of people who died after taking the poison he supplied them,” she said.

Following the first overdose death, investigators found recorded conversations between Lum and another individual whom he was selling drugs to, prosecutors said. In April 2018, Lum told telling the unnamed person that should he die, he'd "be technically my third body."
"I woke up next to my ex-girlfriend, like OD'd," Lum is accused of saying. "The thing is, I saved her the night before."

Lum also acknowledged he "saved" another person too, prosecutors said.
"This other kid I saved too," Lum is accused of saying. "Just like 3 weeks ago...He just sniffed a line and then passed out. I did the chest compressions."

Lum gave heroin to Collado while the two of them watched a movie at a College Point theater, and when they used heroin again together in a parked car, she stopped speaking and passed out, court documents show. Lum called for help and first responders gave her Naloxone, then took her to a nearby hospital, Katz’s office said.

He stayed with Collado at the hospital until she was discharged shortly after 11 p.m., and they went to Lum’s grandfather’s house in Flushing, where they snorted his heroin and Collado went into cardiac arrest, according to Katz. That time, Lum did not call for medical attention for Collado and “attempted to provide” her with “medical care,” Katz said.

Lum continued to use drugs and then fell asleep for an hour while Collado needed medical aid, Katz said.

Lum woke to find Collado unconscious beside him at about 8 a.m. the next morning, and called 911 and administered CPR from the instructions of the medical dispatcher on the phone, but Collado was dead when emergency medical technicians arrived, according to Katz. An autopsy revealed she died from acute intoxication due to the combined effects of fentanyl, heroin and cocaine, Katz said.

In March 2018, Lum sold heroin to Calvin Brown, 24, of Bayside and when he ingested the drugs that Lum gave him, he immediately had a “medical emergency,” Lum called 911 and gave Brown CPR until first responders took him to an area hospital where he survived the overdose, according to Katz.

Three days after Brown was discharged from the hospital, on March 9, he returned to Lum’s home and bought more heroin from him, Katz said. Brown was found dead by his mother in their home the next day, and an autopsy later revealed he died from acute intoxication due to the combined effects of heroin, alprazolam, diazepam and phenobarbital, Katz said.

Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas’s office assisted in the long-term investigation of the case, Katz’s office said.

Daniel Hampton provided additional reporting to this story.