One of the people who fatally overdosed on drugs sold by a crew of Washington Square Park dealers busted Thursday was a Colorado teenager who had come to the Big Apple last year to start an internship with a non-profit and help on a Broadway theater production, according to sources and her family.
Bailey Shaw, 18, who bought fentanyl from the crew known as WSP Enterprise, was one of two people who died from drugs sold by the dealers during a six-month stretch last year, sources told The Post.
The tragic teen was a “rising star” Aspen transplant who was set to start an internship with the non-profit, Broadway Cares, when she took the fatal drugs in June 2024, Shaw’s family told the Aspen Daily News at the time.
NYPD officers in Washington Square Park on Thursday, October 30, 2025. William Farrington
Bailey Shaw, right, with her sister Fiona at the Aspen High School commencement. Courtesy of Daniel Shaw“Bailey got to [New York City] and was just overjoyed to launch her new life,” her dad, Daniel Shaw, said.
“She was about one of the funniest people you would ever want to meet. She was an incredibly complex person who struggled at times but had really found her path and passion in the theater, in her community.”
Bailey shaw receives roses on stage during a performance of “Anything Goes.” Courtesy of Daniel ShawShaw, who had recently graduated from Aspen High School, was also set to start helping with stage management Broadway Bares, a burlesque-style performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom.
Local theater director Casey Trascik said she had a special spark for the stage and was highly driven.
Bailey Shaw was identified as one of the victims who overdosed at Washington Square Park. Courtesy of Daniel Shaw
NYPD arrest two men smoking crack cocaine from a pipe in Washington Square Park on August 15. Stephen Yang for the New York Post
NYPD Mobilization in Washington Square Park. William Farrington
The NYPD at Washington Square Park after arrests were made in connection with drug overdoses. William Farrington“Just getting your foot in the door that way, getting in the room is incredible,” said Trascik, who is the director of ASD Theater Technical Director in Aspen. “ I feel like that really speaks to who Bailey was…you knew this person was special and you wanted to snap them up.”
Federal authorities on Thursday cracked down on the park’s round-the-clock, open-air drug market— nabbing nearly 20 dealers, authorities said.
Sixth Precinct police officers arrest a man on drug charges at Washington Square Park in the West Village. Helayne SeidmanThe dealers, whose coordinated peddling of narcotics in the famed greenspace caused a rash of overdoses, were hit with charges in a sweeping Manhattan federal indictment.
The accused “prolific” traffickers had racked up a total of 80 drug arrests over the past five years, but New York’s toothless laws allowed them back out to sell fentanyl, heroin, and crack-cocaine in the popular park, prosecutors said.
Drugs sold by the crew led to two deaths last year, including Shaw’s and that of a 43-year-old homeless person who’d been living in the park for years.
The homeless person was found next to needles, baggies of crack and empty baggies marked with the crew’s logo, prosecutors said.
