HPMS Teacher Tied to Cold Case

Law enforcement have suggested that a Spanish teacher at Highland Park Middle School may have been involved in or be concealing information about the disappearance of a 9-year-old girl in North Carolina 25 years ago, according to news outlet WBTV.

No one has apparently been arrested or charged with a crime in connection with the disappearance of the girl.

9-year-old Asha Jaquilla Degree has not been seen since Feb. 14, 2000. She vanished while walking along a highway in Shelby, N.C. Witnesses reported that she was pulled into a 1970s, green, Lincoln-style vehicle, according to a Feb. 13 warrant released by Wise News Networks.

Investigators searched for Asha for two weeks after she went missing, including with dive teams, aerial searches, tracking, K9’s, ATVs, horses, interviews, and neighborhood canvases. They now believe that Asha was a victim of homicide, and her body was concealed, according to the warrant.

Seventeen months after Asha’s disappearance, investigators found Asha’s bookbag and clothing, wrapped in two sealed garbage bags, along the highway about 21 miles north of where she disappeared, according to September warrants released by WBTV.

Investigators have since used genealogical data to tie that evidence to the then 13-year-old sister of Lizzie Grace Foster, according to a February warrant. Foster joined HPMS in 2023. On Feb. 21, information about her had been removed from the school’s webpage.

Foster’s parents, Roy Lee Dedmon and Connie Elliott Dedmon, are named in the warrant as suspects in the disappearance, though Foster, who was 16 years old in 2000, is not.

The warrant states that “(d)ue to the ages of Roy Dedmon and Connie Dedmon’s three daughters in the year of 2000, Investigators believe adult assistance from Roy Dedmon and Connie Dedmon would have been necessary in the execution and/or concealment of the crime.”

The warrant includes extensive text messages from Foster to her siblings and ex-husband, as well as information that a man told officers on Sept. 18 that Foster admitted to killing Asha. The admission allegedly occurred while Foster was intoxicated and upset at a house party in the mid-2000s, according to the warrant.

The warrant does not state whether officers believed the man to be credible, but includes that he passed a polygraph test.

Police have approached Foster several times, including at Highland Park Middle School on Sept. 27, to talk about the new information in the case. Foster took a polygraph test in February, and was found to be deceptive when asked if she was concealing information. During the interview, Foster allegedly said “If my dad did it, he did it but I had nothing to do with it,” according to the warrant.

Foster, an eighth-grade Spanish teacher, is originally from North Carolina, according to a July 27, 2023 Instagram post welcoming her to HPMS. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Spanish from UNC Charlotte and taught for 18 years before joining the district, according to the post.

Highland Park ISD officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.