Was 'wet' behind Camden attacks?

The question can be heard up and down the Camden block where Osvaldo Rivera allegedly stabbed a 6-year-old boy to death and slashed the boy's 12-year-old sister last Sunday:

Was the man known as "Popeye," who played ball with neighborhood children and gave them haircuts on his porch not who he seemed or was the dreadful attack fueled by the drug concoction called "wet" that he allegedly told authorities he had smoked that night?

In the Roosevelt Manor public housing complex where Rivera allegedly committed the crimes, where residents say drug abuse is commonplace, mothers last week clutched their children even tighter and kept an eye on the doors where they said known users live.

"They haven't been out since it happened," Jasmine Damon, a young mother of two, said of some suspected users. "None of us want to believe it's [Rivera]. He would call me his sister. We would joke around because I had the 3-month-old and he had a lot of kids, too."

Phones have been ringing more frequently at My Brother's Keeper, a drug rehab center. The possibly wet-fueled attack was the second such occurrence within weeks, and worried mothers and wives want to get help for users they know.

"They say: 'I want to get help for my husband. He's on wet, I'm afraid,' " said Oscar Hernandez, a drug counselor at the Christian organization. "There's a lot of users right now. You can see them out on the street."

Wet is mainly a cocktail of marijuana and PCP (phencyclidine) and often other substances that has long been on the menu at North Camden's drug corners. Though his officers raided the spots where it is sold, Police Chief Scott Thomson told reporters there had been no recent uptick in use of the drug.

"It comes in waves," said Alfred Sacchetti, chief physician at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden. "But we aren't seeing any more patients now than we did five years ago."

But residents are on edge because the killing of Dominick Andujor, 6, happened within a couple of weeks of the beheading of Zahree Thomas, 2, by his mother, Chevonne Thomas, 34, who also was believed to have smoked wet. The Parkside woman, who once had temporarily lost custody of her infant son for smoking wet, stabbed herself to death after a rambling 911 call.

What exactly constitutes "wet" is not entirely clear. Doctors, counselors, and law enforcement sources apply the label to concoctions of some or all of a variety of substances - marijuana, PCP, tea leaves, brake fluid, jet fuel, and even embalming fluid - that have the potential to induce psychotic episodes.

There is speculation that an unusually disturbing batch might be making the rounds in Camden.

City police said they were sending samples of the drug to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lab for analysis to determine whether it was behind the violent outbursts.

Wet's effects range from inducing a euphoric state in which users wander and mumble blissfully, to potentially violent "locked" states in which users become fixated on something and are unable to detach, drug counselors said.

In one case, a user took two bites out of his wife's face, said Lucy DuBose, who runs the drug-counseling program at Fellowship House, another Christian nonprofit in Camden.

"We don't have enough information on wet," she said. "I personally don't even know how to help our clients who are coming in. You just have to wait for it to wear off."

As mourners dropped toys and food last week at the front door of the latest young victims, in the city's Centerville section, neighbors struggled to reconcile the brutal crime with their memory of Rivera as a friendly presence.

Some said he would be out on the street early each morning, usually drinking a beer or smoking what most said was marijuana. Sometimes he was alone, sometimes with others, but always with a cheerful word for passersby.

Robert Murrell, who lives next door, said that when those sessions of sidewalk banter got too loud and he asked Rivera to keep it down, Rivera would always move his friends down the street.

"Honestly, he was one of the nicest people I've ever met," Murrell said. "He would be the last person I would expect to do something like this."

Others in the neighborhood said they knew Rivera only slightly, and the details of his life before a Tuesday bail hearing during which he wept constantly were unclear.

His father, reached by phone, declined to discuss his 31-year-old son.

"I'm not ready right now," Osvaldo Rivera Sr. said. "I lost [another] son two months ago."

As a juvenile, Rivera was convicted at least twice of dealing drugs, Superior Court Judge Thomas A. Brown Jr. said at Tuesday's hearing.

According to neighbors, members of the Rivera family and their children share half of a brick duplex at the end of the block that doubles as a Pentecostal church. A sign with service times hangs in a window.

Since being arrested last Sunday, Rivera has told detectives he did not have a job and was unmarried with 10 children, according to the Camden County Prosecutor's Office.

"He told me he just had a baby, but he was having problems with the baby's mother," said Tia Walker, who lives with her grandchildren in Roosevelt Manor.

After the killing, residents wonder whether another wet-fueled outburst of violence is not far off.

Two blocks down from the site of the killing, Michael Lugo and his family stood by the roadside, collecting donations from passing motorists for the victims' family.

Lugo said he didn't really know Rivera but had heard people talk about him.

"Supposedly, he was a cool guy, and this PCP, it's a very crazy drug," he said. "I know people who are involved with drugs, and I tell them to stay away from this stuff."