CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Not far from Ericsson Stadium, not long before the Carolina Panthers kicked off against the 49ers, the body of Cherica Adams was laid to rest. At neither locale, the stadium nor the cemetery, or at the Victory Christian Center church, was there any sign Saturday of Rae Carruth. The former Carolina Panthers wide receiver was in a Tennessee jail cell, awaiting extradition and facing charges that could lead to the death penalty. Cherica Adams, 24, was killed. Rae Carruth, 25, stands accused of arranging the shooting that took place the night of Nov. 16, minutes after the couple had left a movie theater in an upscale part of town.
Oct 22, 2018 - Former Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth, who was convicted in 2001 of plotting the murder of his pregnant girlfriend Cherica.
They’d taken separate vehicles, for whatever reason, Rae in his Ford Expedition, followed by Cherica and the baby she was carrying. A third vehicle pulled up alongside Cherica. Four shots rang out. Four bullets tore into her upper torso. Chancellor Lee Adams was delivered hours later, 10 weeks premature.
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On Tuesday, Cherica Adams succumbed to her injuries. “I knew her in junior high and high school,” said the woman seated next to me at the church service.
“I saw her last summer at the mall. Rae was with her. He seemed nice, but quiet.
The media is trying to point this at him, but I think that’s iffy. I didn’t know him well, but.” Her words were engulfed in an explosion of music, a five-piece band and a six-person choir up on the pulpit at Victory Christian Center, a non-denominational church with a Southern Baptist soul. It was an upbeat number, both musically and spiritually, and the congregation of more than 600 mourners filled the high-ceilinged chapel with hallelujahs and amens. This was not a funeral, the pastor said on behalf of the family, but a celebration of a life. There was a life behind that name in the newspapers and on TV, an identity that went far beyond being the girlfriend of Rae Carruth, pro football player.
“She was a beautiful person inside and outside,” said Rhandu Adams, a friend (no relation) who had known Cherica for seven years. A 1993 graduate of West Charlotte High School, she attended Winston-Salem University and then North Carolina Charlotte before deciding on a career in real estate.
She was a natural, her boss told the congregation between stifling sobs. She was active in the church after having fallen away for a spell. She was a mother, for one month. Carruth and Cherica had been seeing each other for about a year, though it’s hard to say how much of a couple they were. A close relative of Cherica’s told me nobody in the family had ever met Carruth.
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It stands to reason, then, that Carruth is getting no more benefit of the doubt from Cherica’s family than he is getting elsewhere in America. He wasn’t at the hospital more than once that anybody can remember; that was when the police impounded his vehicle for evidence.
When Cherica died, he was nowhere to be found — until FBI agents found him hiding in the trunk of a car outside a motel in Tennessee, 500 miles away. It stands to reason, then, that when a woman, believed to be Cherica’s older sister, burst into tears at the burial site and shouted, “I’m so mad,” she was shouting at Carruth. A man she never met. Bryan Stoltenberg is a reserve center for the Carolina Panthers.
A college teammate of Rae for three years at Colorado, they were reunited this season. “Rae is the kind of guy, when I first got here, he made sure I had a place to stay and that I was OK for dinner,” Stoltenberg said. “He was a real happy guy. That was his locker-room demeanor.
That’s how I know Rae, and that’s why everybody who knows him thought he’d be the last person to be involved in something like this.” His neighbors in Charlotte can’t believe it. Rae was the guy who signed autographs for the neighborhood kids, who drove their streets slowly and waved as he passed, never had wild parties, rarely had so much as a visitor. There is a life behind that name, too — a life that carried Carruth from the streets of Sacramento to fame and riches as a No. 1 pick in the 1997 NFL draft. And now, perhaps, a life behind bars, or worse.
In some form or fashion, the people who know him all say the same thing: They didn’t know him well. He didn’t let them. The one person Carruth let in was his mother. She is here now, awaiting his arrival from Tennessee, something that could happen today or Monday.
She says anyone who knows Rae knows he’s not capable of something like this. She says he fled not because he is guilty, but because he was terrified of spending another hour in solitary confinement. And yet, he hid in the trunk of that car outside the motel for 90 minutes. “I’ve never been around a more tight-lipped investigation,” a Charlotte-Mecklenberg cop told me. “Usually there’s a lot of talk, but there has been almost none with this one. That tells me they have strong evidence and they aren’t going to put it out till the trial.” No, America, this is not going to be another O.J. He had money and myth to defend him.
He was a football star and a movie star, an icon, The Juice. Carruth, most people didn’t know his name until last week. What’s more, this is the South, not L.A. If Carruth is found guilty, justice will make Chancellor Lee Adams an orphan. If there was any comfort to be drawn from Saturday’s events, it was the belief that this child will be loved. There’s a terribly hard life ahead of him, physically and emotionally, and most of the 600 friends and family won’t be there for him as they were for his mother.
But Saundra Adams will be. She was Cherica’s mom. Now she is Chancellor’s mom.
Remarkably composed throughout the day, she walked up to the casket for one last goodbye. She crouched to touch to the brass nameplate, caressing the letters and numbers that told her daughter’s life. “I love you, baby,” she whispered, and then she blew a kiss.
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