Carlie Renee Coulter | Photo courtesy of Sonja Coulter

A 22-year-old Newhall woman died Wednesday morning of an apparent drug overdose, according to a coroner’s report.

Carlie Renee Coulter, a Hart High School graduate, was found unresponsive at a residence in the 27000 block of Cherry Creek Drive in Saugus, according to Lt. Bale of the the L.A. County Coroner’s Office.

“She died on the Oct. 10 at 8:45 in the morning,” Bale said. “Possible drug abuse. The report’s not yet complete.”

Her mother, Sonja Coulter, who also has an older son and a younger daughter, said at about 8:15 Wednesday morning, “I got a phone call that my daughter wasn’t breathing,and they had called the paramedics over to where she was, and (paramedics) were trying to revive her but she had no pulse.”

She identified the caller as a Sean Lewison. “I don’t even know him,” she said.

Sonja Coulter confirmed Wednesday night that Carlie had been battling heroin addiction for about three years, and last went through rehab at House of Hope in San Pedro.

“We’ve lost more than a dozen Santa Clarita kids this year to drugs,” stated Cary Quashen, founder of Action Family Counseling and Action Parent-Teen Support Group. “Carlie is just the latest example of the war against drugs. We have an epidemic right now. Let’s not let this loss go without creating a powerful impact. Enough is enough, not one more.”

“She (Carlie Coulter) actually graduated from rehab clean for about nine months, and then relapsed back here in this valley,” Sonja Coulter said. “Everybody kept saying you shouldn’t bring anybody back here to this valley because it’s so bad. We’ve been struggling and trying to mentor her. She was going to meetings at the Rafters (in Newhall). She started to look for work…and actually had a job offer from Del Taco. They wanted to put her as shift manager, they liked her so well. But she hadn’t gotten to that part yet. She would go and relapse maybe for a few days and then she’d be OK for a month.

“And then we were having this constant struggle of trying to help her, but she swore to me she wasn’t doing this heroin,” she said. “I hadn’t seen the effects of (heroin) like I did when she first went into rehab. She said, ‘Mom, I couldn’t help it. It’s calling me. The drug just takes me over, and I try so hard…’

“Then she has all these creepy people texting her and I don’t know half the names, she was secretive,” Sonja Coulter said. “But there’s a lot of drug dealers here in Santa Clarita.”

She said she plans to attend a press conference Thursday starting 11:30 a.m. at ACTION Family Counseling’s corporate headquarters, 22722 Soledad Canyon Road in Saugus, about this and other recent suspected and confirmed drug overdoses in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Carlie Renee Coulter would have turned 23 years old on Nov. 7.