Ansonia Police Department
Dupre
ANSONIA – An arrest warrant details how police built a case against an Ansonia man accused of supplying the drugs that led to the fatal overdose of a 24-year-old woman.
Michael Dupre, 50, was arrested on Oct. 9 on one charge of misrepresentation of a controlled substance and one count of sale of narcotics.
Dupre is scheduled to appear in Superior Court in Derby on Nov. 21.
According to an arrest warrant, a 24-year-old Ansonia woman was found dead at her boyfriend’s house on Fairview Street on Oct. 27, 2023. Her death was ruled an accidental overdose.
Officers at the scene recovered pills labeled as Xanax. The victim’s boyfriend and his mother told police that Dupre sold Xanax pills to the victim just before she died. Police also searched the victim’s phone and found texts between her and Dupre in which they discussed Xanax purchases.
However, police sent the pills from the scene to a toxicology lab for testing. The pills were not Xanax, according to the warrant. Instead, they contained bromazelam.
The toxicology report from the woman’s death found that she had both bromazelam and methadone in her system. Pills later seized from Dupre’s apartment tested positive for both substances, according to the warrant.
Bromazelam is a type of benzodiazepine which has no approved clinical use. According to a HealthDay News article cited by the warrant, bromazelam-involved deaths have increased in recent years. According to a coroner cited in that article, bromazelam is particularly dangerous when combined with opiates – a class of drugs which includes methadone.
On Jan. 17, a second woman – the 40-year-old mother of the first victim’s boyfriend – was found dead inside Dupre’s Woodlawn Avenue apartment.
Police got a search warrant for Dupre’s apartment on Jan. 17. Inside, they found 865 pills, used needles, drug paraphernalia, and two phones believed to belong to Dupre, according to court documents.
Police seized and tested six pills from Dupre’s apartment. According to the warrant, none of the pills tested positive for Xanax, the product Dupre allegedly sold them as.
Police said that neighbors had complained about Dupre’s activities before. One complainant told police that Dupre had been selling drugs out of his apartment on Woodlawn Avenue since at least January 2023.
Dupre is also suspected of selling counterfeit drugs which led to the death of a second woman. However, he has only been charged in connection to one death.
Ansonia Police Lieutenant Patrick Lynch said it is unlikely that any charges will be brought against Dupre in connection to the second death. He said that, because Dupre placed the 911 call for the victim, he likely has protection under Connecticut’s “Good Samaritan” law.
The arrest warrant was authored by Detective Jonathan Troesser of the Ansonia Police Department. A search warrant application was written by Troesser and Detective Richard Esposito.
