Two people were arrested last week after the body of a 30-year-old Indiana woman who died from a drug overdose was found inside a burning building.
Police recently arrested Heather Richardson, 34, and Emmit Yarbrough Jr,, 56, in connection with Deborah Leslie’s case last September. They were charged with altering the scene of a death and failing to notify police of a dead body, according to the Times of Northwest Indiana. The newspaper reported Richardson was arrested in May, while Yarbrough Jr. was arrested in March.
Video surveillance footage allegedly shows the two individuals wheeling Leslie’s limp body out of a Motel 6 in Hammond, Ind., late on the night of September 21. Leslie was covered in a bedsheet and was wearing a hat and a surgical mask, according to the Times.
Footage allegedly showed Richardson and Yarbrough Jr. moving Leslie’s body from the second floor of the motel to the parking lot and then placing her in the front passenger seat of her own Mazda vehicle.
Court documents said Leslie “did not appear to be cognitive, conscious and appeared to be unresponsive,” according to the Times.
![Deborah Leslie](https://people.com/thmb/aI1tagkzPlFFy6ln31yXNnJAxMQ=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(327x0:329x2):format(webp)/deborah-leslie-Overdose-Victim-Whose-Body-Was-Dumped-in-Building-that-Was-Set-on-Fire-052323-3-7102d5ed82af46cfb1b4a4ce9bd91785.jpg)
Coroner’s records showed Leslie died from a fentanyl and cocaine overdose. She was reported missing two days after her body was seen being moved, on Sept. 23, and her body was found the same day in a burning building about 10 miles away in Gary, Ind.
Leslie’s parents and four siblings spoke out about her struggle to overcome addiction last year in an interview with The Chicago Tribune. The family said their daughter was in and out of recovery 10 times throughout her life, first becoming addicted to alcohol, then opioids and later heroin.
The 30-year-old had voluntarily checked into rehab multiple times, her father David Leslie told the newspaper. “You can’t say she didn’t try,” he said. “It was two steps forward, three steps back.”
Leslie had most recently been in recovery from 2018 until 2020 when she began using drugs again, the family said, noting she was outgoing and had been successful at work during periods of sobriety.
“It was a roller coaster,” her mother, Maggie Feist Leslie, told the Tribune.
Her mother told the newspaper Leslie always carried overdose reversal medication, such as Narcan or Naloxone, in her purse and often used test strips to test heroin and see if it was cut with fentanyl.
Leslie’s father spoke out about the charges against Richardson and Yarbrough Jr. last week, telling the Times he thought they were “pretty minimal.”
“To me, it just doesn’t seem to be justice enough,” he said. “And I’ll feel that way forever.”