Dante Paul Lacourte

Dante Paul Lacourte was a sixteen year old from San Francisco who became known nationally not for a career or public role, but for the circumstances of his death. He died on April 7, 2026, after taking a counterfeit pill that was later found to contain cychlorphine, a synthetic opioid that had not previously been detected in the city and that health officials say may be up to ten times more potent than fentanyl.

He lived with his family in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, though reports describe ties to Sausalito as well. Outside of school he was an active young athlete. He had competed as a gymnast with a club called The Cave, and more recently had taken up freeride skiing, appearing in junior competitions on the Freeride World Tour, including events at Palisades Tahoe, Kirkwood and Mt. Rose in 2024.

According to the New York Times and other outlets, Lacourte had lived for years with ADHD, anxiety and depression, and his family said he had used drugs, including marijuana and pills such as Xanax and Percocet, to cope with the pressures of adolescence. His parents had sought help through therapists, psychiatrists and rehabilitation programs, and his mother had kept naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan, in the home because she feared he might one day overdose.

On the morning of April 7, 2026, his mother, Christina Lacourte, went to wake him and found him unresponsive in his bedroom at their home on Bush Street. She administered two doses of Narcan, but he could not be revived. An autopsy by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later found that he had died from a combination of drugs, including cychlorphine, another emerging synthetic opioid called N desethyl isotonitazene, and an unapproved benzodiazepine known as ethyl bromazolam.

His death was not widely reported at the time, but it became national news in September 2026, when the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the New York Times publicly linked his case to the first confirmed appearance of cychlorphine in the city's drug supply. The San Francisco Police Department said it had opened a wide ranging investigation into where the pills came from, and that month officers arrested four people on felony charges and seized more than 20,000 counterfeit pills. San Francisco's district attorney said the charges did not yet establish that any of the four had supplied the specific pill that killed him, but she said prosecutors would pursue more serious charges if that link could be proven.

Lacourte's death prompted renewed warnings from city health officials, who said cychlorphine cannot be detected by standard fentanyl test strips and that even a fraction of a counterfeit pill can be fatal. As of this writing, authorities say he remains the only confirmed cychlorphine death in San Francisco.