Cole Scott enjoyed hunting, fishing and being outdoors. This photo, uploaded Nov. 30, 2012, to his Facebook, shows him on the water surrounded by ducks. He was 22 when he died of a heroin overdose in 2016.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series of stories about a Limestone County man’s struggle to free himself from heroin, his fatal overdose, the quest to bring his drug dealer to account, and the effects of this journey on his family. See Saturday’s edition of The News Courier for the conclusion of this report.

“The worst scenarios run through your mind,” Dewayne Scott said of the days his son Cole was missing. “That he’s suffering somewhere, something bad.”

Most of the scenarios involved his son being dead.

Cole had moved to Birmingham in the hope of finally overcoming his addiction to heroin, and even though he hated being so far from his Limestone County home, the family agreed it was in his best interest to stay in the city.

“You’re hoping he went down in a ravine and he’s been down there three days with a broke leg and someone finds him,” Dewayne said. “Or even if he’d done drugs, maybe he’s in the hospital and they didn’t have identification or something. You hope for all that, but the reality was, if my son doesn’t call me, there’s a serious problem.”

In fact, Cole had been on the phone with his dad just a few hours before his death. The company where Dewayne worked as an IT director had laid off all its employees and moved to China. On Friday, Dec. 30, 2016, he dropped the keys off to the company building, sharing a phone call with Cole on his way home.

He would find his son dead three days later.

Searching for Cole

Cole had been clean more than six months when he died. He had relapsed, gone through detox and was staying in a sober living facility in Bessemer, but Dewayne said Cole kept a journal in which he mentioned his frustrations at trying to stay sober or manage finances.

Cole was working to pay off a financial debt as part of the 12-step program. The plan was for him to work two days so he would have the money to pay off the debt, then come home to go hunting with his dad.

Unfortunately, drugs were never far from Cole’s mind, and that Friday was no different. He had called someone in Limestone County to vent about staying sober. Cole had often lamented to his parents about how difficult it was to struggle with sobriety while other people were able to walk away after trying a drug once.

“He’d cry because he didn’t want to be that way,” Cole’s mom Leigh said. “He wanted to be cured.”

It was Leigh who first thought something might be wrong. She had on odd feeling Saturday morning and finally decided to call Cole’s work.

He hadn’t showed up.

They contacted some of Cole’s friends in Birmingham. Despite having graduated sober living, his friends were addicts who knew where to look for someone who may have relapsed.

Saturday was spent driving around the Birmingham area, calling hospitals, calling jails and looking for Cole’s car in all of the usual spots. A police report was filed with Hoover Police Department.

On Sunday, Dewayne said he drove around Limestone County.

“I thought maybe he got up here, relapsed, didn’t want anybody to know,” Dewayne said. He got a buddy to help him check the family farm and other areas Cole might have been.

Good part of town

Cole had had his fair share of DUIs and wrecks over the years. Dewayne said it was mostly fender-benders but Cole often worried about hurting someone’s kids.

On that Sunday, Cole’s parents worried their kid might be the one hurt. They approached Verizon for help in locating Cole’s phone, which was still on. Unfortunately, Dewayne said, they needed a court order.

Dewayne and Leigh contacted a judge, but it was New Year’s Eve and the courts would be closed on Monday for New Year’s Day. So they turned to the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office.

“They can’t do like the phone company and come real close to it, but they could ping and tell what tower,” Dewayne said. “… Once we found where the tower was, we realized he wasn’t in the bad part of town. He was in his old stomping grounds (in Hoover), where he used to live and close to where he worked.”

The tower’s location was sent to Hoover Police Department, and on Monday, Dewayne and Leigh traveled to join the police in searching for their son.

“I knew he was probably dead,” Dewayne said. “I figured he was dead.”

Tragic discovery

The couple arrived in Hoover on Monday and began driving through the area near the cellphone tower.

They visited the mall parking lot, Cole’s bank, his workplace and places he might eat or shop. They were on their way to drive through the Walmart parking lot, where Cole used to buy groceries, when Dewayne mentioned the Salvation Army.

“He had been talking about how he didn’t have a couch for his apartment,” Dewayne said. “We drove right up the little hill to the store and my wife says, ‘There’s his car.’ It was sitting right in front.”

Cole was still in the driver’s seat, with his foot on the brake and his right hand on the gearshift. His left hand held his cellphone.

“The coroner said he just went to sleep,” Dewayne said. “When I found him, he was peaceful.”

“He just looked like a teenager,” Leigh said. “He still had his phone in his hand, like he was texting.” Cole’s parents believe that’s why no one thought anything of the 20-something slumped in the front seat of a car. In fact, before Dewayne could approach the car and open the door, he had to wait for a customer to walk by. He said when a detective asked a store employee if she had noticed Cole, she said she’d seen the car and Cole in the driver’s seat multiple times over the weekend.

“Nobody called (911),” Dewayne said. “Nobody looked in on him. They were open. They were open two hours that Friday night and they were open all day Saturday.”

Leigh said ever since that day, she refuses to just pass by someone in their car.

“I walk over and knock on the window,” she said. “I’ve scared people half to death, but my thing is, if somebody had done that, it may have saved him.”

Instead, Cole stayed in the driver’s seat, in plain view, for three days. A 911 operator advised Dewayne to start CPR while they waited for first responders to arrive.

Leigh had gone to flag down a police officer. Dewayne said she was forced to wait until after investigators and the district attorney had looked over the scene and determined Cole was alone when he died before she could see her son’s body.

“Most times there’s not a lot you can do about it,” Dewayne said. “We hate to call ourselves the lucky ones, but we know so many people who would like to know the guy who sold it to (their loved one) or would have liked to have got them arrested or whatever, and we have that.”

The dealer

The investigation into the circumstances of Cole’s death and subsequent trial took the better part of two years.

The federal case was against 31-year-old Edward Lee Henderson Jr., known as “Hot Boi Eddy,” the dealer who sold Cole his final heroin fix. The case relied on expert testimony no other factor, such as Cole’s physical health or other drug use, could have caused his death, Dewayne said.

“He was in good health,” Dewayne said. “We had his physical records and his autopsy showed he hadn’t drank any alcohol or used any other drugs. It was solely this.”

The case was built in such a way that if Henderson had decided to go to trial, he would have likely gone away for life. Instead, records show Henderson pleaded guilty in April to charges that included selling the heroin that caused Cole’s death.

On Oct. 4, U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre sentenced Henderson to 24 years and four months in prison.