Accounts Vary at Beginning of Carruth Trial

Rae Carruth wanted his pregnant girlfriend killed because she wouldn’t get an abortion, a prosecutor said Monday as the former football player’s murder trial opened.

“He wanted her to have an abortion, but she was adamant in her refusal. She wanted to have that baby,” Gentry Caudill told the jury.

A defense attorney blamed the shooting on a friend of Carruth’s who was angry because Carruth would not provide money to buy marijuana.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Carruth, 26, who played for the Carolina Panthers.

He is accused of hiring someone to shoot 24-year-old Cherica Adams in her car in 1999. She was eight months pregnant with his child, who was delivered by emergency Caesarean section and survived. Adams died a month later.

The prosecutor told jurors that Carruth and his three alleged accomplices laid a trap, and Carruth helped close it by blocking Adams’ car so another man could pull alongside and shoot her.

A recording of Adams’ cell phone call for help was played for jurors. In it, she told the 911 operator that Carruth “was in the car in front of me and he slowed down and someone pulled up beside me and did this.”

Jurors also heard from Nicole Michaels, a paramedic who was the first to reach Adams. Michaels recalled that a police officer asked the victim if she knew who shot her.

Adams answered, “Rae, my baby’s daddy,” Michaels said.

Before she died, Adams gave statements and wrote notes, saying that Carruth blocked her car, then left the scene, according to Caudill.

However, defense attorney David Rudolf said Van Brett Watkins, who has confessed to the shooting and agreed to testify against Carruth, was angry because Carruth would not provide money for a marijuana purchase.