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Rae Carruth and the Murder of Cherica Adams
Not wanting another child, he went from NFL player to inmate
It was Tuesday, November 16, 1999 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The 911 call came in shortly before 12:30 a.m. The operator asked the caller whether police, fire, or a medic was needed. The caller, a woman, responded with, “Police. I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot.”
The caller was Cherica Adams, 24 years old and eight months pregnant. She informed the 911 operator that she was at Wessex Square and had been shot in the neck and the back while driving but managed to pull her car into a driveway. What she said next, though, would be a bombshell.
OPERATOR: “Okay. How did this happen?”
CHERICA: “I was following my baby’s daddy, Rae Caruth, the football player.”
OPERATOR: “So you think he did it?”
CHERICA: “He was in the car in front of me and he slowed down and somebody pulled up beside me and did this.”
OPERATOR: “And then where’d he go?”
CHERICA: “He just left. I think he did it. I don’t know what to think.”
Emergency services pulled up to the house of Farrell Blalock, who owned the driveway on Rea Road that Cherica managed to pull into, within 12 minutes of her 911 call. Taken to Carolinas Medical Center, it was determined that Cherica had been shot four times. Her baby was delivered by emergency caesarean section at 1:42 a.m., just over an hour after his mother was shot. The baby, named Chancellor Lee Adams, did not have a good prognosis as doctors did not expect him to survive.
Seven hours after her son was born, Cherica regained consciousness and began communicating with detectives and answering their questions by scribbling notes. She wrote to them Carruth had been driving in front of her and stopped in the road, blocking her, at which point another car pulled up and opened fire on her. After the shooting, he had taken off, not to return. When asked if Carruth was involved, she drew a question mark. She then went to sleep and never awakened.
