The End of His Season

By NADYA LABI

This was to be Rae Carruth's breakout season. The first-round NFL draft pick for the Carolina Panthers hadn't lived up to the promise he showed in 1997, when he led the league's rookie wideouts with 44 catches and 545 receiving yards. First, a broken foot kept him out for nearly all of the 1998 season; then he was sidelined by a sprained ankle in October. By last week, the only running the 25-year-old wide receiver could do was a graceless flight from charges that he conspired to murder his 6 1/2-months-pregnant girlfriend.

Cherica Adams, 24, was gunned down Nov. 16 while driving her black BMW in a tony neighborhood of Charlotte, N.C. It was after midnight when, according to police, she came under fire from a drive-by car with three passengers. She was hit in the neck, chest and abdomen, but managed to call 911, surviving long enough to apparently finger Carruth, who is believed to be the baby's father. Rushed to the hospital, she later delivered her son by emergency C-section. Last week she died. The football player was arrested and released on $3 million bond, but he jumped bail last week and fled to Wildersville, Tenn. His female companion led FBI agents to where he was hiding, in the trunk of her gray Toyota Camry parked at a Best Western motel.

Carruth was not one of the three men--Stanley Abraham, Michael Kennedy and William Watkins--believed to be in the car from which shots were fired. But Kennedy's attorney, James Exum, tells TIME that throughout the attack, Carruth was driving his white Ford Expedition directly in front of Adams' car while talking by cell phone to Watkins, whom Kennedy has named as the gunman. And a homeowner in the neighborhood where the wounded woman stopped her car says he overheard Adams telling the police that her "boyfriend" had shot her. "Her composure and ability to talk with us were amazing considering the way she was hurt," says police spokesman Keith Bridges. But could Carruth possibly have been capable of what some speculate was a crime of the coldest calculus--murder to avoid paying child support? Surely his weekly salary of $38,000 could cover that expense in addition to the $3,500 a month he was contributing to support a son in Sacramento, Calif.

Carruth is an enigmatic personality, friends say, reserved to the point of being reclusive. "He might not seem that friendly, but he had a good personality," says Matt Russell, a Detroit Lions linebacker who was Carruth's teammate at the University of Colorado. He recalls that Carruth, who majored in English, shied away from bars, preferring to read or attend the theater. Carruth also avoided the media, often refusing to give any interviews. "In our family, an empty wagon makes the most noise," says his mother Theodry Carruth, explaining his quiet demeanor. She claims he was ready to turn himself in but "fled because he got poor legal advice and he was scared." The Panthers took a harsher view of Carruth's actions and released him. "This thing is beyond football," says coach George Seifert. "Look at the lives that have been destroyed."

Evidence links Carruth to the other suspects. Abraham's attorney, James Gronquist, says Carruth and Kennedy struck up an acquaintance at a tire shop after noticing they had the same rims on their tires. And according to Kennedy's attorney, Carruth was hanging out with both suspects on the evening of Nov. 15.

Just after the attack, Carruth visited the hospital where Adams was taken. Was he acting as any concerned boyfriend and father might? Or was he checking to see whether the job had been successful? Carruth could face the death penalty if convicted. Cherica Adams' baby boy, in the meantime, is in stable condition. He'll be raised by Adams' mother.

--Reported by Maureen Harrington/Denver, Susan Kuchinskas/Oakland and Sylvester Monroe/Charlotte

With reporting by Maureen Harrington/Denver, Susan Kuchinskas/Oakland and Sylvester Monroe/Charlotte