'They're going to end up dead like my brother is': Victoria man's death blamed on toxic drug additive

Chris Schwede was found dead Thursday morning in his tent on Victoria's Pandora Avenue. Inside his tent was a blue-tinted form of crack cocaine that first appeared in the city on Wednesday, according to local outreach services.

Chris Schwede, 49, was found dead Thursday morning in his tent on Pandora Avenue, in the heart of Victoria's overlapping crises of addiction, homelessness and mental illness.

Inside Schwede's tent was a blue-tinted form of crack cocaine that first appeared in the city on Wednesday, according to Grant McKenzie, who knew Schwede through his work at Our Place Society, the main social services provider in the area.

"They’ve added a new animal tranquilizer to this turquoise rock," McKenzie said. "And as we see behind me, it is fatal to humans. So they’ve added this in along with fentanyl, carfentanyl, benzos – a real cocktail that’s just leading to straight poison."

The tranquilizer is believed to be xylazine, which has appeared in street drugs in the B.C. Interior and the eastern United States in recent weeks.

"We had several overdoses yesterday from this drug," McKenzie added. "This drug also has a way of sending people directly into psychosis."

Schwede's sister Candice Csaky says her brother died of an overdose because there was no publicly funded care available to him.

"He came to me multiple times in the last year and said he was done with this life. He was going to get a job," Csaky told CTV News. "He was offered a job and he was supposed to start on Monday but he relapsed on the weekend because he didn't have support systems in place."