A 36-year-old woman has been arrested and her boyfriend is suspected of murder after police in Evansville, Indiana stumbled upon a gruesome scene involving two people — one dead — held against their will in chains in a house on the west side of the city on Wednesday morning.
Heidi Carter (pictured above) is facing charges of murder, rape, felony criminal confinement, assisting a criminal, carrying a handgun without a license, intimidation with a weapon, and abuse of a corpse in connection with a situation that led to the deaths of two people.
And her boyfriend, Carey Hammond (also pictured above), is now deceased after allegedly charging at responding police officers with what appeared to be a weapon in his hand.
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According to 14 News in Evansville, the whole incident started earlier this week when Carter met one of the victims on a dating app, and reportedly invited that woman and her boyfriend over to her house.
A police affidavit claims the three of them started drinking, doing drugs, and having sex. Then, Hammond arrived at the home and “became angry and started to beat the two victims with a baseball bat.” Eventually, Hammond physically restrained the couple with chains and raped the woman. Carter allegedly held a gun during the act, and threatened to kill both victims, before later leaving the home herself.
After a few hours, Hammond became further agitated when the male victim started fighting back against his restraints. Hammond then proceeded to “wrap his belt around the male victim’s neck, and strangled him until he died.” Carter returned to the home at that point, and the pair moved the man’s body to a different room after wrapping it in blankets.
Things turned from tragic to truly bizarre when Carter then decided to invite another woman over to the home in order to help clean the house ahead of a landlord inspection. That woman told investigators she noticed Carter had blood on her boots and a handgun in her possession when she came over; she helped Carter clean two rooms before she heard a woman — the other alleged kidnapping victim — in a separate room “asking for help and begging to use the restroom.”
The woman who had come to help clean sat down on what she thought was a pile of pillows and blankets, then, only to discover there was actually a dead body under the blankets. She panicked and rushed out of the house, and was able to flag down a Indiana State Trooper outside.
At that point, according to Sgt. Anna Gray of the Evansville Police Department, officers responded to the house and asked Carter and Hammond to come outside with their hands up. While Carter complied, police bodycam video shows Hammond allegedly refusing repeated requests before coming outside “in an aggressive manner.”
Gray explained:
“[The officers] could actually see movement where they can see someone going in and out of the doorway, and they are telling him, ‘We see you, we see you – come out and show us your hands.’ They’re giving him commands, you know, come out, come out. I mean it happens very fast, he comes out very quickly, there are officers in front of him. He comes out and doesn’t show his hands. He has his hands out in front and has an object out and pointing it — this is a shooter’s stance.”
Whoa…
Gray explained that officers shot and killed Hammond at that point:
“The suspect is deceased and we can’t ask him these types of questions, but when you are surrounded by police officers and you come out with an object that appears to be a gun and you’re pointing it like it’s a gun, I hate to use the word assume, but I can only assume that’s going to in someone’s mind — this is going to get me shot, this is going to get me killed. We call these types of situations suicide by cop.”
According to EPD, there were also several other people inside the house in an upstairs unit — including at least one minor.
The homeowner, Jason Harvey, was one of those upstairs and apparently unaware of what was going on downstairs until police arrived on scene. He and the others complied with police commands to come outside; they have not been charged with anything and investigators say they were not involved in the incident.
Harvey spoke to News 14 about the situation, revealing that he’d allowed Carter to live in his home in an attempt to help her during a time of apparent need:
“At this time, my family and I are in shock from everything. I invited Heidi into our home because she was living in a motel and needed a place to stay. She and my kids had a good bond, she never showed any signs of being like what had transpired. Heidi was staying there until she could get on her feet. Her boyfriend Carey started coming over and things got bad with them fighting a lot. I had asked her not to have anyone over because of my kids but obviously [she] didn’t listen. I was only trying to help an individual out.”
The remaining kidnapping victim was taken to a hospital, and she was treated for unspecified injuries after the ordeal.
Police say Hammond was well-known to law enforcement prior to this incident, as well.
What a terrifying situation…
Our thoughts are with the boyfriend of the victim’s family and loved ones, and of course, the victim herself as she hopefully recovers — physically and mentally — from this horrendous nightmare.
[Images via Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office]
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