Plainfield mother seeks justice for daughter’s death

A Plainfield woman doesn’t believe her daughter died from drug intoxication in North Carolina and she wants to have the sheriff’s office reinvestigate her death.

Debbie Heater, mother of Courtney Heater, said she has been investigating the circumstances of her daughter’s Feb. 2, 2020, death in Columbus County, North Carolina.

The North Carolina Chief Medical Examiner’s Office ruled 24-year-old Courtney Heater’s death was caused by fentanyl and heroin intoxication. The examiner’s office report said she suffered from pulmonary edema, mild bronchopneumonia and blunt force injuries to the head, torso and extremities.

Debbie Heater claimed her daughter’s death was instead caused by a drug-induced homicide and insisted her daughter never used drugs.

Debbie Heater has started an online petition on Change.org to encourage the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office to reopen her daughter’s case. She also began a GoFundMe to raise money for private investigators and an attorney to conduct their own investigation.

Debbie Heater plans to hold a fundraiser March 22 at Craft’d in Plainfield.

“I want Courtney’s life to have made a difference. I don’t want her life to have meant nothing,” Debbie Heater said.

Courtney Heater was a 2013 Plainfield Central High School graduate who played rugby, ice hockey and other sports, Debbie Heater said. She went to Western Illinois University and then to Robert Morris University in Chicago to study nursing, she said.

“She wanted to save the world,” Debbie Heater said.

Courtney Heater met her boyfriend online and moved to North Carolina to live with him.

“He was very controlling. She wasn’t even allowed to talk to me many times,” Debbie Heater said.

She provided The Herald-News a copy of a medical report that said her daughter had been admitted to a hospital in September 2019 “after she was punched by her boyfriend last night about” 10.

The medical examiner’s report of her daughter’s death said her boyfriend contacted 911 and informed them that she had “rolled out of bed and hit her head and was turning blue and not breathing.”

Debbie Heater said she has had to research the circumstances of her daughter’s death “because nobody else did and I know my daughter.” She claimed the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office never investigated her death at all and never took a statement from her boyfriend.

Columbus County Sheriff Jody Green did not respond to a message and call Thursday about the case.

Debbie Heater said she didn’t think she should have to pay for her own investigation. But she said she wants to build a case so the sheriff’s office will pursue charges.

“If I don’t do this, nothing will get done,” she said.