Teen charged in 15-year-old girl’s fatal heroin overdose

Among the dozens of tragic stories of heroin abuse this year, one from Oconomowoc may stand out.

A 15-year-old girl whose mother believes had never tried the drug before died after trying what her ex-boyfriend told her was cocaine.

That was in July. Now a spray of pine boughs and red ribbons marks the holidays at Erika Reiner’s gravestone, etched with a panda bear and a musical staff, as her parents struggle through her loss.

The boy, 17-year-old Seth Moretti, is in treatment at a state mental hospital and facing charges of first-degree reckless homicide. If and when doctors say he’s stable enough to be released, he will move to the Waukesha County Jail unless he posts $50,000 bail. If he’s still hospitalized, Moretti will appear by video at a Jan. 26 hearing.

According to the criminal complaint filed last week, Moretti lived with his grandparents, who found both teens unconscious in Moretti’s bedroom the morning of July 9. Emergency medical teams arrived, but Reiner was already dead. Moretti was unconscious but alive and taken to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.

Hospital staff later told investigators Moretti said he had given Reiner heroin but told her it was cocaine. When he realized she was overdosing, he was too messed up to help, he said.

Before she died, during the afternoon and evening of July 8, Reiner posted to her Facebook and Instagram accounts the night before, that she feared she had taken heroin, and that Moretti had lied to her about the drug.

Using Moretti’s cellphone and bank records, investigators pieced together that he had taken $160 out of his bank account on July 8, and purchased a gram of heroin from “Tony” at a McDonald’s restaurant. When Moretti returned home with Reiner late in the afternoon, his grandfather suspected Moretti might be high on heroin, and about 10 p.m. that evening his grandmother lectured both teens about the dangers of using the drug, and even searched Moretti’s room but found no evidence of drug use.