Yesterday, the ritual was for 18-year-old Mellie Carballo, who died before she could become what her brains and talent and heart promised. Nobody in this city could have looked sadder than her mother, father and sister as they stood at the curb in a light rain and watched her mortal remains loaded into the back of a black hearse.

"I did the best I can," the mother had been heard to say earlier.

Carballo was a smart kid from a fine family and she had gone out partying with another smart 18-year-old from afine family, Maria Pesantez. Even thesmartest teens can suffer mystifying lapses in common sense, and they apparently ended overdosing on drugs in thelower East Side apartment of 33-year-old Alfredo (Tito) Morales early Friday evening. Also present was 41-year-old Roberto Martinez.

As law enforcement officials tell it, Martinez was one of 39 people indicted in 1998 for being part of the Cut Throat Crew. Prosecutors described the organization as "a major heroin distribution drug gang based on the lower East Side." The gang was said to take drug orders via pagers, and use couriers as young as 14.

The Cut Throat Crew's customers included another 18-year-old girl, Evalene Santana. She apparently failed to pay for a small amount of drugs. She died after three gang members attempted to rape her, then tossed her off the roof of a building just down Avenue D from Martinez's home. The killers as well as the two leaders of the gang all got heavy time and remain in prison.

Law enforcement officials say Martinez was a low-level drone who had already been arrested twice for drug sales. His first drug collar was in 1991, and he was paroled after serving the minimum of a three-to-six-year term.

He was arrested for drug sales again in 1996 and was doing a four-to-nine-year term when he was charged with conspiracy for his role in the Cut Throat Crew. He received an added three years.

In 2002, Martinez was freed courtesy of the now defunct "good time law," which required authorities to parole an inmate who had done two-thirds of his maximum sentence. He returned to the same building on Avenue D where he had lived before his second drug arrest.

In 2003, Martinez was arrested in the subway for being the modern equivalent of a token sucker, selling swipes ofa MetroCard. He was released on time served and had no other encounters with the law, save fora 2004 collar for driving with a suspended license.

In papers related to the Cut Throat Crew case, prosecutors list Martinez as "A/K/A Crazy Cat." The street spelling might just as easily be "Krazy Cat."

Yesterday, Carballo's aunt Maria Gralia was saying outside the funeral parlor that an older man known as "KC" had been inviting her niece and other teens to parties where drugs were distributed.

Nobody was saying publicly that they had seen Martinez supply Carballo with drugs. Both Martinez and Morales were insisting to detectives that they are blameless in the teens' deaths. Martinez was taken into custody yesterday, apparently for violating his parole.

Yesterday, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden personally issued a warning that a batch of bad heroin may be responsible for the death of six people in five days in lower Manhattan. These include Carballo and Pesantez. The city is making every effort to prevent any more such deaths.

Of course, there is no good heroin. Much has been said about the injustices of the draconian Rockefeller drug laws. But consider this: Roberto Martinez was convicted twice for drug sales and once more for being part of a major drug gang, and he still managed to be in an apartment where two 18-year-old girls suffered fatal overdoses.

Carballo was just 4 years old when Martinez first went to prison for selling narcotics, and yesterday she was carried in a blond wood coffin from Frank E. Campbell's into the rain, gone before she had even a chance to be one of the greats.

Originally published on August 17, 2005