Family of Braidwood woman killed by an overdose speak out after arrest of alleged dealer

Samantha Kile had been clean for months.

The Braidwood woman was seven months’ pregnant and just two weeks shy of her 23rd birthday when she fell back into the grip of addiction in November 2018. She had battled addiction to opioids – and battled with her mom and stepdad, Kim and Chris Earling – since she was a teenager.

But after several overdoses in early 2018, Sam decided to try to turn her life around. She entered outpatient therapy and was managing her addiction with naltrexone, a long-lasting injection that blocks opioid receptors. She had a job. She bought a car.

But, after she became pregnant – with a boy she had planned to named Jaxsen – she had to stop the injections.

Her mother said she overdosed two weeks after her last injection wore off. She died in the bathtub of the Braidwood home they shared on Nov. 3, 2018, her cause of death officially listed as a combination of drowning, heroin intoxication and fentanyl intoxication.

Last week, Colin West, 26, of Gardner, was indicted by a statewide grand jury on charges of drug-induced homicide, delivery of a controlled substance, and involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide of an unborn child. The indictment alleges West sold the drugs to Sam the night she died, a lethal combination that included two types of fentanyl, according to her autopsy report. West was booked into the Grundy County jail on $1 million bond.

The arrest brings a new chapter for the family, who has fought for more than a year for their daughter to be remembered. The Earlings said the investigation into Sam’s death was stalled from the get-go, alleging that the Braidwood police and former chief Nick Ficarello simply opted not to work the case.

After the election last spring, Braidwood’s new mayor, Bob Jones, appointed Todd Lyons, a former officer and detective in Wilmington, as chief. The Earlings said Lyons made Sam’s case a priority. Kim Earling said she was eventually able to gain access to Sam’s Facebook account.

“He’s been great, his detective has been great,” she said. “They’ve put in so many manhours. When they started this case they had nothing to go off of; the previous administration made sure they had nothing to go off of.”

“The case file appeared to be inactive,” Lyons said, adding that he assigned newly appointed Detective Chris Altiery as lead investigator. Altiery spent several months poring through thousands of pages of social media records, digging up information on Sam’s acquaintances, where she had been the night she died and building a case.

For the Earlings, the arrest is bitter sweet.

“It is great news because I’ve worked so much with [the police],” Kim Earling said. “They treated Samantha like she was a human being. She mattered, her life mattered and it mattered that she and Jaxsen died. But to answer how I am, I’m not even better some days. I lost my life. I lost my soul. I lost my everything that day. I wake up every morning, and I don’t relive finding her, but I have to realize every morning that she’s not here. But I try every day. I have to fight for her.”

The family held a candle light vigil on the one year anniversary of Sam and Jaxsen’s deaths.

The next step is to wait. The case will unfold in Grundy County. The investigation crossed jurisdictions, Lyons said, adding that Kile was sold heroin the night of her death in Grundy County, but died in her Braidwood home in Will County.

West’s next court appearance is scheduled for Dec. 26.