News overnight from New York is that four people have been arrested following Philip Seymour Hoffman’s tragic death, which was caused by a suspected drug overdose.
The actor, who was in the middle of filming the next instalment of The Hunger Games franchise, was found dead in his Greenwich Village apartment. Police found up to 70 bags of heroin, some buprenorphine, a drug used to treat heroin addiction and prescription medications including a muscle relaxant and a blood pressure drug. Some of the drug packets were stamped with the ace of spades and ace of hearts logos, and these are believed to be brand names for certain types of heroin.
Police have since raided a building in Chinatown, finding narcotics and arresting four people, and the suspects are being questioned in connection to sales made to Hoffman in the days leading up to his death.
Though there were rumblings that Hoffman had been taking drugs laced with fentanyl, the substances in his apartment have tested negative for traces of it. The drug is a strong synthetic morphine originally intended for cancer patients, but is now being mixed with heroin by users across the eastern coast of America, and has been connected to 22 overdoses in western Pennsylvania.
Investigators are now trying to retrace Hoffman’s last days by piecing together CCTV evidence. So far they have found that in the day before his death he went to a cash machine six times, taking out a total of $1,200.
Meanwhile, there’s still discussion over what will happen in relation to Hoffman’s role in the fourth film of The Hunger Games franchise. He was due to film another week of the movie, which included what’s being called ‘a key scene’. The producers behind the film are now said to be thinking about whether digital trickery could be used to superimpose his character into the scene.
Hoffman’s funeral takes place in New York on Friday.
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Picture: Rex
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.