After 19 years, former Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth has offered new details about the night his pregnant girlfriend was shot according to David Rudolf, who was Carruth's primary defense attorney during his murder trial.
Carruth now says, according to Rudolf, that he fled the scene because he thought he was in danger himself just before Cherica Adams _ driving behind Carruth in a separate car on Nov. 16, 1999 _ was shot four times in Charlotte.
In an exclusive interview with the Charlotte Observer, Rudolf said he visited Carruth at a North Carolina prison in August and Carruth authorized the attorney to provide additional details about the night of the shooting.
Rudolf was Carruth's lead defense attorney in the three-month murder trial that ended in January 2001. He has remained in occasional touch with Carruth, who was the Panthers' first-round draft pick in 1997.
During that August visit, Rudolf said, Carruth told him a detail that the former NFL player has never offered publicly before _ that Carruth actually was there moments before what turned out to be the shooting of Cherica Adams in 1999. Carruth then "took off," Rudolf said.
Carruth, who has refused multiple interview requests from the Observer, is scheduled to be released from prison on Oct. 22 after serving almost 19 years for conspiracy to commit murder. Jurors believed he had masterminded a conspiracy to kill Adams and her unborn child to avoid paying child support. But the same jury acquitted him of first-degree murder.
Carruth did not testify during the shooting, and the questions of what he saw that night and exactly where he was at the time of shooting have always gone publicly unanswered.
"He was scared, and he took off," Rudolf said of Carruth's actions on the night of Adams' shooting. "And he's not particularly proud of that. It's not sort of a heroic thing to do _ big football player, you know, running. But that's what he did."
Saundra Adams, Cherica's mother, said in response to Carruth's new version of the story Tuesday night: "I don't believe that. I think it's another excuse not to be accountable. But none of it is bringing Cherica back."
