The death toll reached six on Sunday from what authorities say were lethal drugs distributed over the weekend in two neighborhoods in Northeast Washington.

       D.C. police said they are awaiting results from autopsies and other tests to determine what kind of drugs were taken and if they came from the same batch or dealer. The overdoses occurred in the Ivy City and Trinidad neighborhoods.

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       Several of the victims were experiencing homelessness, and their identities have not yet been made public pending notification of relatives, police said.

       These latest overdose deaths came three months after nine people died when, police said, a deadly batch of fentanyl was sold in January in a neighborhood near Nationals Park in Southwest Washington. Their ages ranged from 43 to 74. Five were women.

       In that case, police charged a man and a woman from Northwest Washington with federal drug distribution and conspiracy counts, alleging they knew they had a deadly batch of drugs and sold them anyway from a vehicle at Half and O streets in Southwest.

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       In ordering the defendants in the case detained, a federal magistrate judge said that in his time on the bench, “I have not seen a more serious case than this.”

       D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III called fentanyl a “poison that is being peddled in our community.”

       Opioid deaths in the District nearly doubled from 2018 to 2021, according to statistics from the city. The D.C. medical examiner has identified fentanyl in more than 90 percent of the overdose deaths in 2020 and through March 2021. Statistics for a comparative period this year were not yet available.

       Two arrested in deadly fentanyl sales knew drugs were lethal, discounted them in ‘flash sale,’ prosecutors say

       In the latest cases, emergency calls started coming in after 10 a.m. Saturday, when people began overdosing, from addresses in the adjoining Ivy City and Trinidad neighborhoods, within a triangular border of New York and Florida avenues and Bladensburg Road, police said.

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       Authorities said four people died by Saturday night, and two others died Sunday. Four people remain hospitalized.

       Sabrina Rhodes, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ivy City, said she has been talking to people but has not yet learned if anyone she knows has died. She said the area’s homeless population frequently travels between Ivy City and Trinidad; one of the blocks where police said a person overdosed has a homeless shelter.

       Rhodes said her neighborhood needs more services to help people addicted to drugs. “It’s just heartbreaking,” she said of the overdose deaths.