Ex Gambino 'enforcer' John Alite joins 'war against fentanyl' after losing daughter to deadly opioid
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: John Alite, a mobster who admittedly has killed six people as an "enforcer" for the Gambino crime family, has joined the war against fentanyl after losing his daughter to the deadly opioid.
Alite's daughter Chelsea, 30, tragically died on August 18 after unwittingly ingesting a Percocet that had been laced with fentanyl. Recent statistics show that the fatal drug has quickly become the leading cause of death in the US among adults between 18 and 45. The former mobster has now joined the fight against fentanyl and had vowed to use his platform to raise awareness. The 60-year-old reformed member of the Gambino family is best known for testifying against mob boss John Gotti.
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Speaking to the Daily Mail, Alite said he isn't looking for recognition or sympathy, but rather a fight. However, after a life of extreme violence with the mob, this time it's tragically personal. Doctors took Alite's daughter off her life support in the early hours of August 18, three days after she was admitted to the hospital. Chelsea was 30 years old and a mother to Alite's grandson Brayden, 5. She was the third of Alite's four children and his only daughter, per the newspaper.
Alite took a crash course in what he calls the fentanyl "war" being waged against the country in the weeks after his daughter's demise. He noted how the drug was claiming American lives in record numbers. "People have no control of the streets and coming from my life, being the guy that I am, and I was, I'm a fighter," he said. "There's no way I'm not going to fight for my daughter's life to mean something."
The CDC reported 56,516 deaths involving synthetic opioids - primarily fentanyl – in 2020. It is the leading cause of death for adults between 18 and 45, with around double the number of fatalities that year as Covid-19, auto accidents, or suicide, per data provided by the agency. "I hear politicians talking about the streets or crime or the border – things they couldn't possibly have an education in, but when I talk about it, it's firsthand. It hits home," Alite said. "You become very educated in something when you lose a child, when it destroys your life like it's destroyed mine."
"As a drug dealer I understand the borders," the former mobster continued. "We brought drugs in through the Mexican border, so I understand how we do it. I understand that business and, not to justify our lives as drug dealers, when we were doing it, people weren't dying every day from cocaine and marijuana the way they are from fentanyl." He explained, "Right now, 300 kids are dying in America every day. Fentanyl is not a drug they're seeking out recreationally, they're looking for something else and taking it accidentally. It's being cut into other things and it's killing our kids," adding, "It's 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin. Can you imagine how lethal that is if somebody inhales it or even touches it? It's happening to police officers and first responders who're coming into contact with it and only being saved because they have Narcan."
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Alite said he understands some will find it difficult to heed his words considering moving drugs was once a major part of his livelihood. "When people judge me, I expect that. But this has nothing to do with me," he insisted. "This is my daughter who is an innocent mother, a young woman, with her life ahead of her. She wasn't a drug dealer. She wasn't involved in crime. She wasn't involved in my life." He added, "I don't expect anybody to feel bad for me. But they should be feeling bad for the community of kids and families that are losing their children, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers to a drug that nobody in this country seems to be doing anything about."
Alite acknowledged that his life will never be the same. He said there was no coming back from this personal loss, but he wants to do something about it. "I'm not the guy who can sit in my house and just cry all day. I did that for the first month and then I woke up," he told the Daily Mail, adding, "I chose to fight."