Report: Plea Bargain to Carruth

Prosecutors have offered plea bargains to former Carolina Panther player Rae Carruth and three co-defendants charged in the shooting death of Carruth’s girlfriend, the Charlotte Observer reported today.

Prosecutors have decided to give all four men the chance to plead guilty to second-degree murder and avoid a capital murder trial, sources told the Observer.

Carruth, 26, and the other men are charged with first-degree murder in the Nov. 16 shooting of Cherica Adams. Adams, 24, was pregnant with Carruth’s baby when she was gunned down while driving in southeast Charlotte. Chancellor Adams was delivered by emergency Caesarean section.

Neither the prosecutors nor defense attorneys would comment on reports of the plea offers.

Swimming

A day after breaking one women’s world record and tying another, the Netherlands’ Inge de Bruijn shattered the 100-meter mark by more than a second at the Sheffield Super Grand Prix in England on Saturday.

De Bruijn won the final in 56.69 seconds, 1.19 seconds faster than the previous mark set last year by American Jenny Thompson.

Tennis

At Duesseldorf, Germany, Dominik Hrbaty and Karol Kucera led Slovakia to its first World Team Cup title, coasting to singles victories over Russia, which fielded two players ranked in the world’s top 10. Hrbaty defeated a struggling, cursing fourth-ranked Yevgeny Kafelnikov, 6-4, 7-6 (1), and Kucera followed with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over ninth-ranked Marat Safin.

Spain’s Gala Leon Garcia won her first WTA title, defeating Fabiola Zuluaga of Colombia, 4-6, 6-2, 6-2, in the Madrid Open in Spain. . . . Croatia’s Silvija Talaja warmed up for next week’s French Open by winning the Strasbourg Open in France with a 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 victory against Rita Kuti Kis of Hungary. . . . Andrei Pavel, an unseeded Romanian, defeated Andrew Ilie, 7-5, 3-6, 6-2, to win the $425,000 Raiffeisen Grand Prix at St. Poelten, Austria, for his second career tournament title.

Carlos Drada of Kentucky will meet Alex Kim of Stanford in the finals of the NCAA tournament today at Athens, Ga. The unseeded Drada upset top-seeded Jeff Morrison of Florida, the defending champion, 6-2, 6-4, and Kim defeated teammate K.J. Hippensteel, 6-2, 6-7 (1), 6-2.

Miscellany

Stacy Dragila set an outdoor world pole vault record Friday night, clearing 15 feet, 1 3/4 inches at the Sky Invitational at Phoenix, two weeks after tying the old mark at the Modesto Relays.

Dragila, of Pocatello, Idaho, shared the previous record of 15-1 with Emma George of Australia, set in February 1999 in Sydney.

Arizona won its second NCAA women’s golf title in five years, dominating at Sunriver, Ore., with a 21-stroke victory over Stanford. USC finished fourth.

Arizona’s Jenna Daniels won the individual title at one-under-par 287.

Mike Springer’s third goal of the game, a short-handed tally with 2:23 remaining, sent top-seeded Syracuse to a 14-12 victory over Johns Hopkins and into the NCAA Division I Lacrosse championship game at College Park, Md.

Syracuse (14-1) will try for its seventh national championship Monday against Princeton, which defeated Virginia, 12-11.

Andre Blom had a pair of tries and Grant Wells scored 16 points as the U.S. Eagles took advantage of mistakes by a young Japanese team to defeat the defending champions, 36-21, in the Epson Cup Pacific Rim rugby tournament at Osaka, Japan.

Sheila Taormina, an Olympic gold medalist in swimming four years ago, won the women’s Olympic triathlon trials at Irving, Texas, to earn a spot on the first U.S. Olympic triathlon team.

Taormina, who won her medal in the 800-meter freestyle relay, is seeking to become the second woman to win an Olympic gold medal in different events in separate Olympics. The other was Anfisa Rezisova, who won a gold medal in Nordic skiing in 1988 for the Soviet Union and in the biathlon in 1992 for the Unified Team.

Glasgow Rangers won soccer’s Scottish Cup at Glasgow by overpowering Aberdeen, 4-0, in a game marred by an injury to Aberdeen goalkeeper Jim Leighton, who broke his jaw in his final game at age 41. It was a sad end to a 26-year career for the former Manchester United and Scottish international keeper. . . . Espanyol ended a 60-year Spanish Cup title drought, defeating Atletico de Madrid, 2-1, to win the Copa del Rey at Valencia.

Ted Drake, the artist and illustrator who created Notre Dame’s trademark leprechaun logo, has died at age 92. His best known creations were Notre Dame’s bearded leprechaun and the symbol of the Chicago Bulls.