Reads the original article on the Watauga Online website.
A Boone woman has been charged with death by distribution in connection with the November 2025 overdose death of her son, according to court records and reporting by multiple media outlets.
Shari Rogers Treadway, 66, of Boone, a former nurse at Watauga Medical Center, was arrested Wednesday evening, Sept. 16, by the Alexander County Sheriff’s Office on a warrant from the Boone Police Department. She faces a charge of death by distribution (delivery), a Class C felony, in addition to embezzlement and drug diversion charges. Court dates are scheduled for Oct. 5 and Oct. 19.
Court documents list Nov. 6, 2025, as the date of the offenses. Investigators allege that Treadway, who had access to controlled substances through her nursing position, diverted Adderall and hydromorphone — both Schedule II controlled substances — and that she delivered fentanyl and cocaine to her son, Seth Treadway, that same day. The ingestion of those substances is alleged to have proximately caused his death.
The embezzlement and drug diversion charge was originally filed in January and was indicted by a Watauga County grand jury in March. The North Carolina Board of Nursing has since suspended Treadway’s license. In its filing, the board said some of the controlled substances found in her home “allegedly matched the hospital lot numbers” tied to inventory missing from Watauga Medical Center. The board also confirmed that Seth Treadway was her son.
Death by distribution is a felony under North Carolina law (G.S. 14-18.4), enacted in 2019 and expanded in 2023 in response to the opioid crisis. The law applies when someone unlawfully delivers or sells certain controlled substances and a user dies as a proximate result.
