***DXM News: "Intruder found not guilty of 2002 killing of Ocean County neighbor"***

   OK. First, here is the background reports:

http://coricidin.org/coricidin-freakout-causes-death.htm

   Now, the update. According to the report below, it is uncertain
whether the accused took PCP or Coricidin. Based on my scientific
knowledge, I'd say that most likely he took Coricidin than PCP. DXM is
known to cause false positives on drug tests for PCP. Pecoreno, they guy
who gaved the accused the drugs, at the time said he gave him Coricidin.
This would explain the PCP positive. And, what are the odds he'd mention
a drug that is well known to cause PCP positives at random? Thus, I'd
say Coricidin is the most likely.


http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/ocean/111903CAHILL.html

Intruder found not guilty of 2002 killing of Ocean County neighbor

By ANDREW JOHNSON Staff Writer, (609) 978-2012

TOMS RIVER - A year after a woman was shot to death in her kitchen, an
Ocean County Superior Court judge ruled that the Tuckerton man who
entered Eileen Howey's home and precipitated the altercation that led to
her accidental shooting was "laboring under a defect of reason" and not
guilty, by reason of insanity, on two charges Tuesday.

Judge Edward J. Turnbach ordered that Michael Cahill be sent from the
Ocean County Jail to a state psychiatric hospital in Trenton today,
where he will be evaluated within 30 days and then could remain
institutionalized for a month, as long as 111/2 years or anywhere in
between, Senior Assistant Prosecutor William Heisler said.

He was charged with aggravated assault and criminal trespassing.

Cahill's trial lasted one day and involved testimony by three people,
after he waived the right to a jury trial, a decision that was made in
conference with his mother, said Deputy Assistant Public Defender Kevin
Young on Tuesday.

Neither Cahill's family nor a Howey contingent were particularly pleased
with the trial or the verdict as a whole Tuesday.

Eric Howey, 32, shot Cahill with his .40-caliber gun after Cahill,
saying things like, "The lord loves you. I am the lord," entered Howey's
Giffordtown Lane home at 5 a.m. on Sept. 28, 2002.

Initially looking for help and acting strangely, saying he had been
poisoned, Cahill ultimately turned violent, punching the smaller Howey,
getting on top of him and choking him.

An off-duty armored car security guard, Howey warned Cahill that he had
a gun, before he got the gun from his bedroom and then fired at Cahill
five times.

What Howey didn't realize during the early morning confusion was that
his mother, Eileen Howey, 63, was standing behind the intruder and was
herself struck once in the chest.

He was never charged.

Howey came to court with three of his friends for support Tuesday. He
said it was too painful for his father, Romaine Howey, 75, to attend.

"I don't think there's going to be any justice for the Howeys," friend
Ross MacDonald said after the verdict, noting that Cahill could be
walking the streets again within months and his friend's mother was dead
now a year.

"The best sentence would have been him dead that night," another friend,
George Corbett, said about Cahill.

Corbett said that Cahill should never have been out of an institution to
begin with if his mental problems were that severe. "The system failed
again," he said.

Dr. Daniel Greenfield, of Millburn, testified that Cahill first entered
a mental institution when he was 5 years old - at Bellevue Hospital
Center in New York - and had a long history of mental problems, which
some doctors said bordered on schizophrenia.

Greenfield tested Cahill in jail twice, the first time six weeks after
the shooting, and reviewed his mental history for the defense.

"He was tall, thin ... with a tremendous bushel of flaming red hair, and
a bright orange beard," he said of their first meeting at the Ocean
County Jail, where he said Cahill looked disheveled and was nearly
unintelligible. "He was more out of composure than I would have expected
him to be."

Greenfield said that he doubted that Cahill was taking his prescribed
anti-psychotic medicine during the time of the shooting or in jail last
fall. He said that was common in those with Cahill's problems.

He said that the 34-year-old looked neater and more normal in court
Tuesday.

The psychiatrist said that Cahill met the legal definition of insane
because he did not know what he was doing that September night, nor did
he know his behavior was wrong.

The prosecution presented two Little Egg Harbor Township policemen, one
who responded to the crime scene and one who interviewed Cahill the next
day at the Atlantic City Medical Center, where he was taken for gunshot
injuries.

It remains unclear whether Cahill's episode that night - which started
with rambling at home in a fit and then knocking on neighbors' doors -
was triggered by PCP, a drug that showed up in toxicology tests taken at
the hospital last year, Greenfield said.

"Was that what set him off?" Heisler asked the psychiatrist.

Greenfield said that he couldn't be sure.

PCP is a drug known to send some users into psychotic episodes.

The doctor described the defendant's mother, Meredith Cahill, as a
"fierce advocate" for her son.

She originally called 911 after her son began saying he had been
poisoned while in their Tuckerton home the night of the shooting.

Meredith Cahill was in court Tuesday. She said that her son's friend
John Pecoreno, 19, was at her house the night in question and she
believes that he gave her son the PCP.

Pecoreno told The Press of Atlantic City last year that he gave Cahill a
dozen Coricidin cold pills so he could get high.

"I think he should be indicted for murder," Meredith Cahill said of
Pecoreno.

Heisler said that his office interviewed Pecoreno, but there was no
proof that he knowingly gave PCP or any illegal drugs to Cahill.

"It's a lousy situation," the prosecutor said. "What can you do?"

"I'm disappointed," Howey said during a break in the proceedings, about
the fact that the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office dropped the original
pursuit of felony murder in the case. He said that he learned of that
decision months ago.

Howey has said that his mother would still be alive if Cahill didn't
enter his home, and was hoping to see the Tuckerton man sentenced, for
the sake of justice.

Turnbach explained his decision by saying that while he agreed with the
prosecutor that Cahill was guilty of aggravated assault and criminal
trespassing last year, he also fit the definition of being legally
insane.

To e-mail Andrew Johnson at The Press:

[EMAIL PROTECTED]