
{"id":22449,"date":"2011-12-15T12:38:34","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T17:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=22449"},"modified":"2011-12-15T12:38:34","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T17:38:34","slug":"vivid-testimony-in-lovette-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/12\/15\/vivid-testimony-in-lovette-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Vivid testimony in Lovette trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Rose Laudicina<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Staff Writer<\/em><br \/>\nTestimony continued in the trial of the State of North Carolina v. Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr. this week, as expert witnesses were called to the stand, details about Carson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last moments were told and the validity of testimony from Demario Atwater\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ex-girlfriend was questioned. <\/p>\n<p>Lovette is accused of murdering UNC Student Body President Eve Carson on March 5, 2008, with Atwater, who has pled guilty and is currently serving a life sentence. The defendant has pled not guilty to all charges.<\/p>\n<p>Jayson McNeil, a childhood friend of Lovette, provided testimony of the events surrounding Carson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last hours, of which little was previously known. <\/p>\n<p>McNeil said Lovette called him on the evening of March 4 and asked for a ride for himself and Atwater to Chapel Hill, but that he declined. <\/p>\n<p>McNeil said that Lovette phoned him again on March 12, sounding anxious, having just learned of Atwater\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arrest, and again asked for a ride. McNeil picked him up, and claims Lovette told him what happened on March 5. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He explained to me that they saw Eve Carson get into her car and they rushed her,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. District Attorney Jim Woodall had previously contended Carson had been taken from her house. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He explained that they took her to a part of the woods and she was pleading with them and said they could take whatever they want, and they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to do what they were doing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d McNeil said. <\/p>\n<p>Woodall asked McNeil why Lovette said they murdered Carson. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He said he murdered her because she had seen their faces,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d McNeil said. <\/p>\n<p>Woodall maintains Lovette shot Carson four times with a handgun before Atwater shot her in the head with a sawed-off shotgun. <\/p>\n<p>McNeil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s testimony came after that of Dr. Cynthia Gardner, the medical examiner who performed Carson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s autopsy. Her testimony left some jurors in tears. <\/p>\n<p>Gardner said that after the first four shots, Carson would have been alive and able to move and talk, while the final shot, into her temple, was immediately fatal. <\/p>\n<p>McNeil recently pled guilty to drug charges, and is hoping to get a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony.<\/p>\n<p>Another witness who took the stand is also being accused by the defense of having ulterior motives for testifying. <\/p>\n<p>In 2008, Shanita Love was dating Atwater and living with him in Durham along with her three children and his mother and three siblings. She testified about events that happened before and after March 5.  <\/p>\n<p>Love said that on the night of March 4, Atwater left their apartment around 10 p.m. and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t return until 5:30 a.m. <\/p>\n<p>However, she said wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t aware of her boyfriend and Lovette\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s involvement until she saw a photo on the news taken at an ATM of what prosecutors contend is the defendant driving Carson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s car. She said Lovette was at the apartment, saw the picture, cursed, asked to use the phone and left. <\/p>\n<p>Love also testified she was in the car with Atwater, Lovette and their friend Jeffery Charles Harris when Lovette disposed of the handgun prosecutors say he used to shoot Carson. <\/p>\n<p>She later helped police find two of the three pieces of the gun. <\/p>\n<p>Although Love said she did not remember throwing out any pieces of the weapon, when defense attorney Karen Bethea-Shields questioned Celisa Lehew, the Chapel Hill Police Department\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lead investigator on the case, she said Harris told investigators Love had also thrown something out the window. <\/p>\n<p>Bethea-Shields asked Lehew if she believed the reason Love had so much information that had not previously been released, including the amount in Carson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s accounts and the fact that Atwater had not sexually assaulted Carson, was because Love was there when the murder was committed. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153She never informed me she was there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lehew said numerous times. <\/p>\n<p>Initially when asked why she decided to talk with police, Love said that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it was the right thing to do.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d However, when the defense questioned her about her motive and the reward offered for information, Love said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I did state that if I could get the reward, that would be nice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>While Love\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s involvement with the defendants after the murder could have led to her being charged in the case, she was granted immunity for her testimony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Testimony continued in the trial of the State of North Carolina v. Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr. this week, as expert witnesses were called to the stand, details about Carson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last moments were told and the validity of testimony from Demario Atwater\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ex-girlfriend was questioned. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22450,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22449\/revisions\/22450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}