They were a tragic trio – three high school pals from a middle-class Long Island town whose heroin addictions had deadly results.
Two of them died of overdosing, and the third, John Zappulla, could spend the rest of his life in jail for allegedly mowing down and killing two young mothers and a baby boy during a drug- fueled rampage.
The family of Zappulla’s dead pal Eugene Dimmick said seeing his friends die from drugs should have been a wake-up call to quit his heroin habit.
“I remember being at the funeral home when John walked in with his mother. That should have been enough,” Dimmick’s grandmother told The Post. “Those who play with fire really get burned.”
Dimmick was found lying unconscious on Eldert Lane in Brooklyn’s East New York section on July 3, 2000 – a few blocks away from the stretch of Atlantic Avenue where Zappulla ran down two teen moms pushing babies in strollers on Wednesday, authorities said.
Dimmick “died of acute opiate and alcohol intoxication,” said a spokeswoman for the medical examiner, who confirmed Dimmick was on heroin.
Shortly after Dimmick’s death, another of Zappulla’s Wantagh HS friends overdosed.
That boy, two years younger than Dimmick and Zappulla, 25, was found dead in his bathroom, said two sources close to the friends, who requested anonymity.
One of Zappulla’s former classmates said the boys started using drugs in middle school – dabbling with pot before moving to heroin in high school.
They made regular trips to score drugs in Brooklyn, because they “had a fixation with the city as a dangerous place,” said Dimmick’s cousin, Chris Graf.
The two deaths were the final straw for Zappulla’s parents, who “spent a fortune” to send him to rehab, said Dimmick’s mother, Ann Coleman.
“John was upset. He went away for a while to get away from the drugs,” said Dimmick’s younger brother.
The treatments never stuck – and two Brooklyn families are now coping with three deaths and an infant fighting for his life.
It happened in broad daylight as Zappulla’s speeding SUV roared along Atlantic Avenue.
He smashed into a light pole, but backed away and continued along Atlantic, swerving into the wrong side of the street for several blocks, said cops.
At Logan Street, cops say, Zappulla was moving at 65 mph when he smacked into Yaritza Santos, 19; her 10-month-old son, Manuel Villot, and Nery Mejia, 19.
Mejia’s 10-month-old son, Ricky, is in critical condition at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Zappulla drove on for another seven blocks, where he jumped another curb at Autumn Street.
Two blocks after that, his SUV flipped over several times and smashed into a truck. Passers-by helped pull him from the car and said Zappulla looked “totally destroyed, totally lost.”
Zappulla is in critical but stable condition at Bellevue Hospital – and is under arrest facing a litany of charges, including murder, vehicular manslaughter, DWI, reckless endangerment and assault.
“Were sorry for what he had done to those poor families. Were just devastated,” said Zappulla’s aunt.
“I think we’re all guilty because this is going on under our noses,” she said of drug use among young people.
“It’s all because of goddamn heroin,” Coleman wailed.
She said she “couldn’t believe it” when she heard.
“My son’s dead and now this happens to John Zappulla,” she said.
“John is a nice kid and deserves all the leniency he can get,” she said, while conceding “nobody put a gun to his head.
“You know who I want to see in jail? The guys who sell cocaine and heroin,” she said. “Those goddamn bastards should suffer the way we are.”
Coleman said Zappulla’s arrest dredged up painful memories of finding her son “cold and not moving,” overdosed in his bed on graduation day in 1996.
“Who could believe my son from Wantagh – we live in a nice home. He was raised right,” she said
Dimmick survived a second overdose on Memorial Day 2000. “People had been there to take him to the hospital and he was saved,” Graf said.
But two months later, Graf said, “he was alone and he died.”