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Woman Charged In Inmate's Fatal Heroin Overdose

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A Plymouth woman is charged with murder, accused of providing another inmate at the Hennepin County Jail with a fatal dose of heroin.

Thirty-one-year-old Cortney Ann Metcalfe is charged with third-degree murder after another woman was found unresponsive in a jail bunk in January, according to the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.

The attorney's office said lifesaving measures were attempted on the woman, but she was pronounced dead at Hennepin County Medical Center. An autopsy revealed heroin toxicity as her cause of death.

Metcalfe was booked into jail for fifth-degree drug possession on Jan. 19 and assigned a bed adjacent to the woman who overdosed. Surveillance video showed both Metcalfe and the woman going to the bathroom just before 3 a.m. Jan. 21. Both women were carrying things.

The women left the bathroom separately.

While searching Metcalfe at the medical center, officers found a plastic bag containing a half-gram of heroin, according to the attorney's office.

Metcalfe told investigators she smuggled the heroin into the jail in her vagina, gave some of it to the victim and watched her use it the morning she died, according to the criminal complaint.

Metcalfe is expected to appear in court Friday afternoon.

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