The Boy They Couldn't Kill

The English language has a million words, but only one for the two kinds of forgiveness. This is a major failure. The two kinds may be similar at the molecular level but they are far removed in magnitude. Like a candle flame and a volcano, an April shower and a hurricane, a soft tremor beneath your feet and the great San Francisco earthquake.

The first kind of forgiveness is the easy kind. Someone wounds you, and in time this offender comes to see what he has done. He returns to lay the wound at your feet. And when you reach down to pull him up a sort of charge passes between you, a cleansing force that refreshes both souls.

Candle flame and volcano. The second kind of forgiveness is a rare occurrence that becomes rarer as the wound grows more severe. In this case the offender gives nothing. He never comes to you. And when you go to him, he turns you away. This leaves you alone with your open wound and a solitary choice. No one will blame you either way. But the wound is yours to keep, or let go, and that choice may plot the course for the rest of your life.

One night 13 years ago a wound was opened in the dark, in a place deep in the abdomen that surgeons call the seat of the soul. The wound was a subterranean river, and it was not closed off until there was no more blood to lose. Professional athletes have done many terrible things over the years, but this was probably the worst. An unborn boy lay in the dark near the rising lake of his mother's blood, and soon he would join her on the brink of death.

The mother had a mother, and this story is about her. She came from the Piedmont of North Carolina, with its valleys full of corn and cotton, and her people were good and prosperous. You can go to Kings Mountain today and find Jack Adams Road, named for her father. He was one of six brothers who sang in a gospel group and worshipped in a redbrick edifice called Mount Olive Baptist Church. You can go to this church today and see the place where Saundra Adams grew up. That is her name. Saundra Adams. What she learned at Mount Olive was an overwhelming sense of gratitude for life. The sense that you don't wake up unless God opens your eyes, don't see the rising sun unless God pulls it from the horizon, don't put food in your mouth unless God helps you hold the fork. And you do all these things and you rejoice.

Saundra was 16 when she and a boy gave in to their desires, and she was 17 when Cherica was born. About to start her senior year in high school. Saundra's father was plowing his cornfield when she went into labor, and he wanted to finish, so they were late to the hospital. There Saundra was in the backseat of that Chevy Caprice, trying to hold Cherica in, and Cherica kept coming, and Saundra kept holding, and Cherica kept coming, and from the day she was born to the day she died she had a bald spot on top of her head about the size of her mother's fingertip.

It was 1975 in rural North Carolina. A girl in this situation was expected to move away or at least quit school. But they were Adamses, hardworking, successful, and her mother and father expected her to graduate. They would help with the baby. They were disappointed by her reckless behavior, but Jack was thrilled for another chance to sustain the Adams bloodline. He took Cherica riding on his tractor and told her she would have many children.

After graduation Saundra's parents said, Go on to college. Make something of yourself. We'll keep Cherica. You can see her every weekend. So Saundra did. She got a psychology degree from UNC-Charlotte and a good job in personnel at IBM. And she brought Cherica to Charlotte to grow up.

Cherica grew up fast, and soon she was living a fast life. She had these deep brown eyes and this willowy frame, and the men took note. She modeled in clothing advertisements and sold real estate. She earned enough to buy a black BMW and a red Mitsubishi coupé. She danced at the Diamond Club and ran in the circles of the newly rich. She mingled with the Hornets and the Panthers, and one day at a barbecue in the summer of 1998 she met a young wide receiver named Rae Carruth.

Although her lifestyle may have suggested otherwise, Cherica was in some ways an old-fashioned woman. Her grandfather's words had stayed with her. She wanted a wedding, a husband and many children. A whole football team, she used to say. Once she and her mother watched a movie in which a woman couldn't have children, and her mother, through modern technology, carried the child for her daughter and gave birth to her own grandchild.

Mom, Cherica said, would you do that for me?

Girl, yes, Saundra said.

It was Mother's Day 1999 when Cherica gave Saundra the news. You don't have to carry it for me, she said. I'm gonna have my own.

Cherica was thrilled about her unborn son. She read My First Bible out loud and immersed him in the music of Bach and Beethoven. And although Saundra rejoiced with Cherica, because she saw every life as a gift from God, she knew it would be complicated. Cherica wanted to give the baby the Carruth name, but her mother was against it. If you're not married when the baby comes into this world, Saundra said, he needs to be an Adams.

Rae Carruth didn't want him to be anything. Carruth's life was quickly diverging from the script. After making the NFL All-Rookie team in 1997, when he led all first-year players with 44 catches, for 545 yards, he had missed most of the '98 season with a broken right foot. He felt shunned by his Carolina teammates and stayed home alone, playing football on his PlayStation. He planned to come back stronger than ever in '99, but in September he was benched for part of the game after dropping a crucial pass in a two-point loss to the Jaguars. In mid-October, against the 49ers, he suffered a left-ankle sprain that would keep him out for a month. Another season was derailed. His career was going nowhere. And now another woman would soon be demanding child support.

Carruth knew a guy called New York and another guy called Little Man. New York weighed 286 pounds and would do anything for money and plenty of things for free. He had once stood on a roof for several hours, throwing glass window panes down at the police. He had once set a fellow prison inmate on fire. Little Man was not so frightening, but he knew his way around a gun and a crack deal. For someone who wanted to solve a problem outside the law, New York and Little Man appeared to be useful men.

Cherica went to a childbirth class, and Carruth went with her. New York later testified under oath about that. He said Carruth told him to meet them after the class and beat up Cherica and make her lose the baby. But New York didn't show. He was nothing if not a con man, so he strung Carruth along. One time New York agreed to find Cherica at her apartment and kill the kid there. Another time he was going to ambush her behind a restaurant. He took cash payments of $300 and $2,000 and kept delaying. Finally, they settled on a plan to murder Cherica.

On Nov. 15, 1999, when Cherica was about seven months pregnant, she got a call at her apartment. Carruth wanted to take her to the movies. Cherica fired up the BMW and drove to his house. From there, she called her mother. Strange men were coming and going. She saw an odd transaction that involved bootleg satellite television. Something's not right, she told Saundra. I don't know why I'm even here.

Just cancel the movie, Saundra said. Tell him you're not going. You're just gonna leave. Saundra stayed on the phone with Cherica and heard her repeat these things to Carruth. And she heard Carruth talk her daughter back into going.

No, no, no, he said. I'm going. I'm leaving right now. Let's get your things. Let's go to the car. And they got in his tricked-out white Ford Expedition and headed off to the Regal Cinemas for a late screening of The Bone Collector, with plans to return to Carruth's house afterward.

Cherica's roommate later testified that around midnight she got a phone call. Cherica was heading home. Carruth was coming with her. This was a total surprise. Cherica had left the apartment in disarray. She asked the roommate to straighten up her bedroom. A prosecutor would later say this change of venue was a crucial part of Carruth's plan. It was 10 miles north from his house to Cherica's apartment. He drove the white Expedition, and she followed in the black BMW. Behind her was a gold Nissan Maxima that contained Little Man and New York.

Rea Road is one of the prettiest drives in metropolitan Charlotte. Going north from I-485, it's a winding four-lane avenue divided by a tree-lined median. You cross a bridge over Four Mile Creek, and at Pineville-Matthews Road you can see the breathtaking crown-shaped sanctuary of Calvary Church. From there the road narrows to three lanes, then two, and it slopes down to a hollow that's secluded on both sides by trees and underbrush. There, at about 12:30 a.m., Rae Carruth came to a sudden halt.

Cherica hit the brakes.

The gold Maxima pulled around and stopped on her left.

She was trapped.

New York had a Charter Arms five-shot .38 Special revolver, and he emptied all five rounds into the BMW. The Expedition pulled away, taking Carruth to a friend's house to play video games. Little Man turned the Maxima around in a driveway and headed south. But as he sped up the hill and saw the lonely hollow receding in the rear-view mirror, he caught a glimpse of the BMW's brake lights flashing red in the dark. And he knew they had left the job undone.

At 12:31 that morning, a wireless phone call was placed to the Mecklenburg County 911 dispatch center. The recording is 12 minutes and six seconds long. It is the sound of a woman dying.

DISPATCHER: 911 Baker. Do you need police, fire or medic?

CHERICA ADAMS: Police. I've been shot. I've been shot.

Between deep breaths and moaning, and honking her horn to seek help from local residents, Cherica described her vehicle, her wounds and her precise location. She also said the words that would send Rae Carruth to prison.

MEDIC: O.K. How did this happen?

CHERICA: I was following my baby's daddy, Rae Carruth, the football player.

(A few questions later)

CHERICA: He was in the car in front of me and he slowed down and somebody pulled up beside me and did this.

MEDIC: And then where'd [Carruth] go?

CHERICA: He just left.

Four of the five bullets had found their mark. Three lodged in her flesh without serious harm. But one left a trail of destruction. It pierced her left side and passed through her abdomen, crossing her right chest, coming to rest near her right armpit. Along the way it tore her stomach and large intestine and made innumerable holes in her small intestine. It penetrated her liver, her diaphragm, her lung. It cut her pancreas in half. It severed the splenic artery and vein, opening such a fountain of blood that she eventually lost it all, and more. The tireless doctors at Carolinas Medical Center kept replacing the blood through intravenous lines, and she kept losing it. Six liters. One hundred fifty percent.

The lethal bullet missed the boy, just as the four other shots did. It missed his mother's uterus by an inch or two. But her blood was his blood. It flowed through the uterine artery to the placenta and gave him the nutrients and oxygen he needed to live. Now the blood was diverted. It was pooling in his mother's chest. And the unborn child began to suffocate.

Nearly 70 minutes passed from the time of the shooting to the time the boy was delivered by emergency C-section. Ten more and he might have been stillborn, according to Docia Hickey, the neonatologist who helped save his life. But the effects of those 70 minutes would be irreversible. Without oxygen, cells began to die in his cerebellum and basal ganglia. There was tissue death in the brain. The human body is quite adept at self-healing and regeneration. But lost brain cells are gone forever.

The boy came into the world, and he was blue.

Saundra says she found her daughter after the C-section in one of her last moments of lucid speech, and she asked Cherica a question.

Do you want him to be a Carruth or an Adams?

Adams, Cherica said.

And so the blue boy became Chancellor Lee Adams.

A week passed. On Nov. 25 the police rounded up Carruth and three other suspects: Van Brett Watkins (New York), Michael Kennedy (Little Man) and Stanley Abraham, a friend of Little Man's who was in the car that night. All were charged with multiple felonies, including attempted murder and intent to kill an unborn child. Carruth was released on $3 million bond.

On Dec. 14, 1999, four weeks after she found the strength to make the call that saved her unborn son's life, Cherica Adams died. Just before the end, Saundra lay down beside her daughter. "I love you," she said. And Cherica left just the way she had come, in the grasp of her mother's hands.

Within an hour or two, Saundra's lawyer had filed a motion in Mecklenburg District Court. By the end of the day a judge had signed an order granting Saundra Adams emergency custody of her grandson. She would carry a child for her daughter after all.

On Jan. 19, 2001, after a two-month criminal trial, the jurors delivered a split decision: They found Carruth guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, of using an instrument to destroy an unborn child and of shooting into an occupied vehicle, but not guilty of first-degree murder. That meant he would not face the death penalty. The judge had some leeway in determining his prison sentence, and Saundra Adams was called to testify.

"Chancellor has cerebral palsy because of this act," she said, facing the judge from the witness stand. "This heinous act. You know, thank—we do thank God that he's still alive. You know, he is our miracle child. Because he was not supposed to be here if that plan had been implemented properly. But Chancellor is alive, and he's got such a strong will. Just like his mom. He is fighting for his life."

She went on, her voice gaining force.

"Every day. I see that in Chancellor every day. Chancellor at 14 months old is not even doing the things that some four-month-olds do. Chancellor can't hold onto this ball. Chancellor can't pick up a spoon and hold a spoon.” Her voice rose to a place of righteous fury.

"He has trouble even holding a rattle in his hand and rattling. He's not sitting up. Talk about first step—he can't even, he's not even near a point of taking a first step. The doctors are telling me that he might not even take a first step till he might even be three years old, or older. But yet Chancellor has such a strong will and such a great personality. And that's the trait that I hope—maybe he did get some of that from his father.

"Because I do believe in miracles, I know that Chancellor will be better. We're gonna give him lots of love, and I know that God is, is working things out already for him to be totally and completely well. And in my heart, even though Rae Carruth has not shown one single ounce of remorse, to me or anyone in my family, there's not been one 'I'm sorry about what happened to your daughter.'

"But in my heart, because I'm a Christian, as an act of my will, and because I know it's out of obedience to God, I am forgiving Rae Carruth."

Eleven years later. Hot day in June. You wait in a T.G.I. Friday's on the north side of Charlotte, looking through the glass toward the parking lot. A metallic-blue minivan pulls into the handicapped-only space by the front door. She gets out of the driver's seat and comes around to the near side. The sliding door opens, and you see him for the first time.

It's hard to say what makes you cry. His face, perhaps, with his father's light skin, his mother's dark lashes and deep brown eyes, lit up with joy when he sees his grandmother's face. Or his body, slim and muscular, athletic if not for the hands that curl inward and the right leg that won't stand straight. Or the way her hand rests on his back as she guides him across the asphalt. Or the way he walks, lurching, as if his skeleton were a rusty machine.

They hurtle down I-77, singing Gospel music together, and he sways from side to side, and his voice is a fervent and joyful moan. They visit his godmother, Judy Williams, who feeds him fried potatoes and onions, and then they go to physical therapy, where his therapist, Amy Sturkey, is teaching him to walk on his own.

"Work those hips for me, Sweet Pea," she says as he bounces on a small trampoline. "Tell that hip to come over and join the party."

She stands by him, and he starts to fall, and fear shows on his face, because he can't catch himself, because his brain was damaged in those minutes when his mother's blood was diverted, but now Sturkey catches him, and he smiles again. He won't quit. Step up, step down, right, left, deathly serious, neck bulging with the effort, jerking like a baby and bent like an old man, so easy to damage, so hard to repair, and when he is done his grandmother holds him, his breathing soft but deep, and she whispers in his ear. "Rest on G-Mom's shoulder a little bit."

And he does, and soon they're off to another structured activity, this time in a church gymnasium with the Allegro Foundation, where children with autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy gather to play and learn. Could he have run the 40-yard dash in 4.29 seconds like his father? Could he have caught a deep pass over the middle in the NFL? A teenage volunteer throws him an orange beach ball, pillow-soft, over and over from three feet away, and Rae Carruth's son can catch it only half the time. An athlete? Yes, Chancellor Lee Adams is an athlete. He won a gold medal last April, in the 30 meters, in a motorized wheelchair, at the Mecklenburg County Special Olympics.

A football player? Yes again. Last year at a park in Charlotte he played in a flag football game with other kids of similar ability. Someone tossed the ball in his lap and he took off in that motor chair with the flag trailing behind him. Every few yards he would stop, and the defenders would close in, and G-Mom would yell, Keep going! Keep going fast! And he would go again, just out of their reach, and stop again, and go again, and finally G-Mom ran to him and the coaches ran to him and he smiled and laughed with delight because he could tell from their reactions that he had done something very good. And that good thing turned out to be a touchdown.

His grandmother leaves the gym for a moment, for a respite from all that intensity, and he sees that she is gone. He turns to you, sensing that you must know something, and he looks into your eyes. And he holds the eye contact without fear or shame. The purity in his gaze is astonishing, like a clean white flame, and then he asks that question again.

She could have filled him with hate, for his father and his Carruth blood; or anger, for the loss of his mother; or bitterness, for the loss of who he could have been. She filled him with something more powerful. He hardly ever cried as a baby, so quick was she to feed him and hold him and change his diapers, and as time went on he seemed to cry only for others. He would cry if one child hit another child, or at the suffering of a movie character, or when his godmother had a nosebleed. When G-Mom had food poisoning, so severe she had to crawl along the floor, there he was, crawling beside her.

She taught him that the rain was a shower of God's blessing, and he believed her, so that when his schoolmates ran inside to stay dry he just stood there and let it fall on him. She taught him that he could do anything, that he had no limits, even though a neurologist told her he would never walk or talk, and now of course he can do both. He can ride horses. He started sixth grade at the end of August. He makes his bed and cleans his room without being told. He wakes up smiling and goes to sleep smiling and in between he looks like the happiest person in the world. On the spectrum of cerebral palsy, he is somewhere near the middle. Conventional wisdom says he will always need help, always be catching up, never quite get to normal. But you never know. Medical technology is advancing. He runs through his therapy with a blazing intensity, and Sturkey thinks he could one day dress himself, prepare his own meals and walk safely around his own home. His grandmother believes he will get a job, get married, prolong the Adams bloodline and do many other amazing things. It may not be wise to bet against her.

They're in the minivan again, driving toward home. You want to go with them, but she will drop you off at your hotel instead. She is polite but firm. The home is Lee's sanctuary. No strangers allowed. It's late afternoon now, the heavy air draped over the Piedmont like a blanket pulled too soon from the dryer, and Saundra Adams is talking about Rae Carruth.

"I'm not gonna have anything negative to say about him," she says. "I thank him for my grandson. I thank him for my grandson."

There is a long silence.

"After what you've lost," you say.

"Like I say," she says, "you can focus on what you've lost or what you have left. So I didn't lose. I have my grandson. I have my daughter with me in my heart, always. I have her with me through Lee. So I don't focus on loss. I mean, I think she's in Heaven, with God, so that's definitely not a loss. So I've got a lot left, and a lot of hope left, and a lot to live for, and to be able to help my grandson to become the wonderful man he's meant to be. I haven't lost anything.

"Really, I've gained. I've been pushed into my role and destiny."

This story was edited and adapted from an article written by Thomas Lake in the September 17, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine.