Two women found dead in a Capitol Hill apartment last week likely died after ingesting contaminated cocaine, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s office. The bodies of Sara Valenzuela, 36, and Maria Paschell, 49 were found by police on Wednesday in Valenzuela’s apartment last Wednesday. As Capitol Hill Seattle blog reports, it hasn’t been confirmed that the cocaine the two women consumed was contaminated with acetylfentanyl, a synthetic drug five times more powerful than heroin. However, officials wanted to put out a warning ahead of time about the dangers of this additive. “There is no way to know whether cocaine is laced with acetylfentanyl, so the best prevention is to avoid use of cocaine altogether," according to Dr. Jeff Duchin, Health Officer for Public Health in Seattle and King County.
Conservative activist Tim Eyman has a new billionaire ally, writes Danny Westneat in the Seattle Times. Ken Fisher, the sixth wealthiest person in Washington state, has been giving and lending hundreds of thousands of dollars to Eyman’s anti-tax initiatives. Eyman has been having a difficult time lately, but Westneat writes that liberals hoping he won't have much of a presence on the November ballot shouldn’t be too quick to celebrate. “Sorry to say it, liberals: This could be your last Eyman-free year for a while.”
The Oregonian reports on the aftereffects, three days later, of the oil train derailment that hit the Oregon town of Mosier on Friday. The town’s water treatment plant was closed after around 10,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into it, and about a quarter of the town had to be evacuated. But slowly, normal life is resuming. The exact causes of the derailment are still being investigated. According to the article, town residents agree that the derailment could have had worse consequences, but weather conditions prevented the fires from spreading. "This was a horrible, horrible event that almost destroyed our community," the town’s Fire Chief says.
