Sep 21, 2016 2 min read

A Charleroi area teenager was charged Wednesday with dealing heroin under a continuing federal investigation designed to address the huge number of recent overdoses in the region involving highly pure heroin.

A criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney general’s drug task force in Pittsburgh charged Tristin Bradley Axton, 18, with possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, the court record states.

Investigators do not have a “solid address” for Axton, and they do not believe he is enrolled in high school at this time, said Margaret Philbin, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney David J. Hickton.

Axton became a target of the federal Heroin 360 Initiative that includes federal, state and local police and is investigating heroin and heroin laced with the synthetic opiate fentanyl in the Washington County area and Western Pennsylvania, the affidavit supporting the criminal complaint indicates.

“The current affidavit is only a small portion of the information known by this group of investigators about the drug activities of Axton,” the affidavit alleges.

Investigators armed with a federal warrant permitting them to stop and search Axton for drug-related items located him Tuesday when he was allegedly in the process of selling a brick of heroin, or 50 stamp bags of the drug, at a location that was not revealed in court documents.

Axton attempted to flee the scene on foot, but was apprehended.

The officers claimed to have seized 70 stamp bags of heroin, money and other property from Axton and his drug customer. They also took three of Axton’s cellphones.

It was not immediately known Wednesday if Axton was later released or placed in federal detention.

Washington County made national news last year after three people died in a spate of 29 drug overdoses that were reported over an August weekend within its borders. Laboratory tests on one of the stamp bags found at one of the fatal overdoses confirmed the heroin was laced with fentanyl.