The police report on the death of Leslie Carter, Nick and Aaron Carter’s sister, released February 2, states that the 25-year-old singer had been getting depression treatment and may have died from an overdose of medication.
Her death occurred on Tuesday at her father’s house in upstate New York. While the official pronouncement on her death will be issued after toxicology tests have been conducted, Chautauqua County sheriff’s incident report carries the story of Leslie’s last day as recounted by her stepmother.
According to stepmother Ginger Carter, Leslie had been having mental problems for a long time and she may have died trying to fight an onset of depression.
The young singer with her 10-month-old baby was on a visit to her father’s place and her tragic morning began quite peacefully with her and her stepmother drinking coffee on the porch.
Almost immediately she told Ginger that she was feeling out of sorts and headed for the bathroom. After a fairly long while Ginger began to wonder why she was in there for so long. She went to investigate and found that her stepdaughter had collapsed in the shower.
The woman helped her get up and to bed where Leslie apparently fell asleep. Her stepmother said that her breathing seemed to be regular and there was no change in the color of her face.
Some time later she came in again with Leslie’s baby hoping that the baby’s presence will make Leslie come to and play with it. The young woman didn’t wake up but seemed all right in other aspects – there was nothing to show that anything was wrong, said Ginger.
But when Leslie’s father arrived on the scene shortly after 4 p.m., Leslie was lying unconscious and not responding. Father Robert saw that she was not breathing and tried to do CPR; finding that it was not working, he dialed 911. When Leslie was brought to hospital, she was dead on arrival.
There were a lot of medications lying around – the drugs she took for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, a muscle relaxant and some anxiety alleviators.
When authorities interviewed Ginger, they noticed that she looked drugged too: her speech was slurred, her eyes were glazed with small pupils, and she felt decidedly sleepy. When questioned, she admitted to having taken six different pills of medications that she had forgotten, probably Xanax, and the interviewing officer suspected that she may have had an overdose.
Ginger thought she had taken only four pills but when Robert discovered that Leslie was not breathing he made her take another one to calm down.
It is not clear whether Ginger Carter had received any treatment.
