Police in NYC arrested three men and a woman late Tuesday in connection with the apparent drug overdose death of Oscar winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. The four — two men in their 50s and one in his 20s — and a woman in her 20s were arrested at a Chinatown apartment that was placed under surveillance following a tip to police.
Friends found Hoffman unresponsive on the bathroom floor of his apartment on Sunday morning. The heroin needle was still in Hoffman’s arm when paramedics arrived. He was pronounced dead at the scene Sunday at 11:30 a.m. A witness observed Hoffman purchasing heroin from 2 men near his Manhattan apartment after withdrawing $1,200 from an ATM at around 8 p.m. Saturday night.
NYPD investigators found 5 opened bags of heroin near Hoffman’s body and an additional 65 unopened bags of heroin scattered around his apartment. The cellophane bags were stamped with the drug dealer’s “Ace of Spades” logo. The drugs were traced back to the building where the 4 suspects were arrested. Police believe the suspects supplied the heroin that Hoffman purchased on the street before he died.
Hoffman entered rehab for his drug addictions in his early 20s. “I was 22, and I got panicked for my life,” he said in a 2006 interview with 60 Minutes.
“We’re going to miss him,” actor George Clooney told In Touch magazine. “It’s senseless in a lot of ways, so it’s hard to do. We miss him,” he said. “It makes it very difficult to be here 48 hours in this town after he died.”
Clooney and Hoffman co-starred in 2011’s The Ides of March.
