NEW YORK — At least one of four people arrested during an investigation of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s suspected fatal heroin overdose had the actor’s cellphone number, two law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Investigators zeroed in on the four after a tipster, responding to publicity about Hoffman’s death, told police he had seen Hoffman at the lower Manhattan apartment building where they were arrested on Tuesday and he believed that’s where Hoffman got the heroin, the officials said.
But prosecutors declined to pursue charges against one of the four, and two of the others were charged only with a misdemeanor charge of possessing cocaine, not heroin. Only one, jazz musician Robert Vineberg, was facing a felony charge of heroin possession with intent to sell.
Lawyers for the three people charged denied their clients had any role in Hoffman’s death.
Meanwhile, the medical examiner’s office said more tests are needed to determine what killed the actor. Toxicology and tissue tests are typically done in such cases.
Police say they think the Oscar-winning actor might have died of a drug overdose, although his death is being investigated as suspicious pending a more definitive ruling by the medical examiner.
Hoffman, 46, was found dead Sunday with a needle in his arm, and tests found heroin in samples from at least 50 packets in his apartment, law enforcement officials have said.
The Associated Press
