Buncombe County Driver Charged With Murder After Passenger Dies in Crash

Katherine McCain, 47, of Mebane, was a passenger in a 2002 Toyota Sienna van that left Alexander Road near Fletcher Martin Road at what investigators described as a "very high" speed and came to rest upside down in a tree shortly before midnight on March 21. She did not survive. The driver, Jeremy Jason Heath, 54, of Marshall, now faces a second-degree murder charge.

French Broad Fire Department and Buncombe County Sheriff's Office personnel responding to the 265 Alexander Road dispatch found the van off the left side of the roadway. The North Carolina State Highway Patrol had sent troopers to the scene for a motor vehicle collision with injuries involving a possible impaired driver.

Heath was arrested the following day, March 22, by an N.C. State Highway Patrol trooper and charged with second-degree murder, aggravated felony death by vehicle, and driving while impaired, according to an arrest warrant. The warrant states Heath was "subject to an impairing substance" at the time of the crash and that his "impaired driving offense was the proximate cause" of McCain's death.

Sgt. JP Henderson of the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office said the murder charge was based on how the car was driven and the driver's actions in the vehicle. Henderson added that state law requires the elements of impairment and a person's death to charge a driver with second-degree murder. He confirmed Heath and McCain were the only people in the vehicle "that we've determined at this time."

At a first appearance hearing on March 23, Judge Edwin Clontz ordered Heath held without bond pending a bond hearing. Heath remains at the Buncombe County Detention Facility, and authorities said further charges are pending.

The crash marked the second homicide case in Buncombe County in 2026 to carry a murder charge. In March, the body of Marco Loretto, 61, of Asheville, was found near Elk Mountain Scenic Highway, and Christopher Robin Rogers, 61, was charged with second-degree murder in that death before Rogers was found dead in Leicester from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 6.