North Carolina State guard Eric Lockett was arrested and charged with assault early Thursday for an alleged altercation he had with a woman believed to be his ex-girlfriend on Tuesday, arrest records from the Raleigh Police Department show. 

According to online court records, Lockett is accused of hitting the woman in the face during an argument that saw an Uber driver call the police.

In his first court appearance Thursday morning, a judge ordered the 23-year-old to have no contact with the alleged victim. He is currently being held without bond at the Wake County (N.C.) Detention Center. Because he has no previous criminal history, Lockett is eligible for the pretrial release program that would set his bond at $1,500. His next court date is slated for March 27. 

N.C. State coach Kevin Keatts said in a statement issued by the university that Lockett was indefinitely suspended. “We await additional information,” he added. 

Messages made by USA TODAY Sports to reach Lockett’s attorney or legal representation were unsuccessful. 

Lockett, a senior grad transfer averaging 5.0 points and 3.3 rebounds per game this season, missed Wednesday’s game against Syracuse. 

A North Carolina man has been charged with trying to bring an assault weapon, body armor and hollow-point bullets into a U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in New Jersey.Dustin A. Peters, 25, of Wilmington, went to the facility in Cape May to attend a graduation ceremony o Thursday, authorities said. The bullets were found during a routine vehicle search, the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. Authorities later found the assault weapon, a handgun, body armor and many rounds of ammunition, the statement said.Click the video player above to see headlines from WXII 12 News.The Coast Guard said it did not consider Peters a threat to the center or the local community. The FBI was assisting in the case.
Peters was charged with a variety of weapons and other offenses. He was being held Friday at the Cape May County Jail pending a court hearing. It was not immediately clear if he was represented by an attorney.

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WCIV) — 

A former Fort Dorchester High School football player was arrested by Coastal Carolina University Police on Tuesday.

Myles White, 20, is accused of criminal sexual misconduct in the third degree.

Police say the incident was barely reported last week but the actual sexual assault happened in September 2016.

Police say the victim said she was sexually assaulted at her apartment. Police say White said he went to her apartment after she invited him.

Police say White was restricted from campus when he was arrested on Tuesday.

Coastal Carolina Police also say that White has been suspended from the CCU football team indefinitely.

According to Coastal Carolina’s website, White is a junior that plays defensive line on the university’s football team.

Coastal Carolina Police Department charged one of the university’s football players with third degree criminal sexual conduct on Tuesday, according to jail records.

Miles David White, 20, was arrested by police about 1:30 p.m. and is still incarcerated at J. Reuben Long Detention Center as of Wednesday morning, records show.

Coastal Carolina University’s website lists White as a junior from Fort Dorchester. White played in all 12 games in 2016 and was named the team’s Special Teams MVP for the game against Furman, the website said.

The Sun News has requested a police report for more information about the case.

Check back later for details.

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) -

It came in the form of a neatly hand-written letter. Fifteen pages folded inside an envelope from the Sampson Correctional Institution in Clinton, North Carolina. The carefully penned words offered nearly two decades of thoughts from a man who made headlines in the worst of ways and then disappeared.

Rae Carruth has spent the last seventeen years of his life behind bars. In 2001, the star Carolina Panthers wide-receiver was convicted of charges related to the murder of Cherica Adams, a beautiful 24-year-old who was seven months pregnant with his child. She was shot four times while driving her BMW by someone Carruth hired to pull the trigger.

The story made national and international news. The thought of a 1997 first round draft pick having the soon-to-be mother of his child killed in order to avoid paying child support didn’t make much sense.

But that’s what police said happened. He was arrested twice in the months after the shooting; first, in November 1999 on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder, among other charges.

He was arrested a second time a month later, in December 1999, after Adams died. FBI agents found Carruth hiding in the trunk of a car in the parking lot of a Best Western hotel in Tennessee. He, along with three co-defendants, was charged with murder.

A little more than a year later, in January 2001, Carruth was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, shooting into an occupied dwelling and using an instrument to destroy an unborn child. He was found not guilty of the first-degree murder charge.

He was sentenced to 18 to 24 years in prison and is scheduled to be released this fall.

Motivated to break his silence

During the trial, Carruth didn’t take the stand and aside from one interview he did with CNN early in his sentence, the public has never heard his side of the story.

Instead, the narrative has been written by a bright-eyed boy with an infectious smile. Carruth’s son, Chancellor Lee Adams, is 18 years old now. Cherica’s mother, Saundra Adams, has been by her grandson’s side as he’s fought to overcome the challenges that come along with his Cerebral Palsy diagnosis.

Chancellor’s joy is apparent and Carruth can feel it – even behind bars.

While he’s only met his son twice, both times in the early years of his life, Carruth has kept a close eye on Chancellor through frequent newspaper and television stories. And he says Chancellor alone is the reason he’s finally deciding to break his silence as his October release date quickly approaches.

An open-letter to Saundra Adams is the way Carruth has chosen to share his side of the story. Over the years, Chancellor’s grandmother has done interviews that Carruth claims haven’t always been truthful. Therefore, he spent days working on a letter that would offer his version of the truth to Adams and the world for the first time.

Carruth says he long ago accepted his lot as a “social pariah”. He knows people may hate him even more after reading his words. But he only seems to care about one person. Carruth says he wants to be a father to his son.

The letter, addressed to Ms. Adams, was sent to WBTV, not her personally. He says that’s because he’s written her before and received no response. This way he can apologize to her once and for all for what happened to her only child.

The call from Sampson prison

Saturday afternoon, the phone rang in the WBTV conference room. The recording announced a call from the Sampson Correctional Institution.

On the other end of the line was the voice of a man that used to be recognizable from post-game press conferences. Seventeen years in prison hadn’t changed Carruth’s voice from that of the Panthers player captured on tape in the WBTV archives.

The call had to come in the late afternoon after he finished his shift as a barber at the prison barbershop. He works there on Fridays and Saturdays.

Since being incarcerated, Carruth has earned his certification as a barber from the North Carolina Board of Barber Examiners.

At first, Carruth spoke cautiously. He’s always been wary of reporters and, he said, watching the way his story had been covered over the past two decades hadn’t done anything to ease his hesitation.

His call to WBTV was arranged by a longtime family friend who reached out to a WBTV reporter after Carruth decided to write the letter.

While he was eager to get his side of the story out, he wasn’t excited about speaking on the record.

He finally agreed to a recorded interview after some back-and-forth with a reporter.

‘I take responsibility for what happened’

“I feel like if I did it in the open, it would put an end to the lies. If I say publicly, ‘Ms. Adams, I apologize, Ms. Adams, I take responsibility for what happened,’ that she can no longer get on television and do an interview and say Rae has never apologized to me,” Carruth said.

Carruth wouldn’t answer questions about the specifics of the night Cherica was shot multiple times. But he does say he takes full responsibility for her absence.

“I’m apologizing for the loss of her daughter. I’m apologizing for the impairment of my son,” Carruth said. “I feel responsible for everything that happened. And I just want her to know that truly I am sorry for everything”.

He still wishes he could go back to 1999.

“If I could change anything, I’d change the whole situation. His mother would still be here and I wouldn’t be where I’m at. So that’s what I’d want to change. I want the incident to never have happened at all,” he said.

From the beginning, the story read that Cherica was Carruth’s girlfriend. In fact, a neighbor told WBTV the night of the shooting he heard Cherica tell police her boyfriend, Rae Carruth, was responsible.

But he tells a different story. In the letter, Carruth addresses their relationship and the alleged motive that he had her killed because she wouldn’t get an abortion. Carruth says the two were never in a relationship. Instead, he says, the two had just casually “hooked-up” a handful of times.

Carruth admits he brought up the possibility of abortion when Cherica told him she might be pregnant. But according to him, he never broached the subject again once she expressed her desire to keep the child.

‘I should be raising my son, his mother should be raising her son’

While Carruth touches on many topics in the letter, he says his main goal in writing it was to hopefully build a relationship with Chancellor one day.  Carruth, now 44, feels like he owes him.

“I let him down as he came into this world and the only way that I can make that right and the only way I can work out my relationship with my son is to be there for him,” he said.

Adams has said in past interviews she plans to be at the prison gates with Chancellor when his father is released. She’s also said she is open to the two having a relationship. The day Carruth read that, he says he mailed visitation paperwork to Adams and invited them to Sampson County, but never received a response. Carruth knows he’s a stranger to his son but he wants to start building a relationship before his release.

In the letter, Carruth tells Adams she, of course, won’t live forever and he’d like to be the one to care fulltime for Chancellor eventually. He says he realized the responsibility that carries.

“I should be raising my son. His mother should be raising her son. Ms. Adams should not be doing this and I want that responsibility back,” he said. “I feel like he might not ever have his mother in his life but he could still have me and I could still make a difference and I don’t think that’s anyone’s responsibility when I’m still here”.

Through the photographs and videos Carruth has seen of Chancellor over the years, he says he sees himself, and Cherica, when he looks at his son.

And while he’s critical of things said about him by Ms. Adams, he’s nothing but complimentary of and grateful for the role she’s played in Chancellor’s life.

In the letter, Carruth thanks Adams for the “unconditional care, compassion, love and support” she’s shown the child from the very beginning. He goes on to call Chancellor a “miracle child” and credits Adams for that.

A changed man, ready for a quiet life

Carruth says he’s not the person he once was; seventeen years behind bars and a relationship with God has changed him. He admits the version of himself in the public eye twenty years ago was immature and self-centered.

“When I first got incarcerated I would ask myself how did this happen? How are you here? And the number one answer that I had was I didn’t have a relationship with God,” he said. “And I know some people might smirk or laugh about that but I know now that I have a very real relationship with God and that’s changed a lot of the ways that I see and view a lot of things”.

On October 22nd, 2018, Rae Carruth will be a free man. He doesn’t say much about his plans, just that he’ll likely go back to California to live a private life. He hopes Chancellor can one day be a part of it and he wants Saundra Adams to know the ball is in her court.

As the call wrapped up, Carruth paused after being asked what about the biggest lesson he’s learned while in prison. He sighed and said, “I’ve learned that the choices that we make in life don’t just affect us. They affect your loved ones, your family, the people around you and that’s something I didn’t realize before.”

Now, he says, he wants to make up for that. 

Copyright 2018 WBTV. All rights reserved.

by PETE IACOBELLI, AP Sports Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — 

Suspended Louisville freshman Brian Bowen Jr. has signed to play with South Carolina.

Bowen was held out of practices and games after Louisville announced it was being investigated as part of a federal corruption probe of bribery in college basketball that led to the firing of coach Rick Pitino.

The 6-foot-7 forward enrolled at South Carolina this week. He will sit out the next two semesters before hitting the court, due to NCAA transfer rules.

“Brian deserves a fresh start,” Gamecocks coach Frank Martin said in a statement Wednesday.

Ten people, including four assistant coaches and Adidas executive James Gatto, were initially charged in the investigation. One of the coaches was Oklahoma State assistant Lamont Evans, who was a member of Martin’s South Carolina staff from 2012-16.

Martin consulted with the university president, the board of trustees and athletic director Ray Tanner before getting the OK for Bowen to join the Gamecocks.

Bowen must be reinstated by the NCAA before he will be allowed to play. Tanner said the school’s compliance office will work with the governing body over the next few months to ensure Bowen’s eligibility to make it to the court.

Bowen was suspended by Louisville after news of an alleged payment involving the Cardinals and his father to get him to join that school. The federal complaint stated that Gatto and others attempted to funnel $100,000 to a recruit’s family to gain his commitment to play for Louisville. Bowen was not named in documents, but details made clear that investigators were referring to the freshman.

Bowen signed with Louisville last June and was expected to lead one of the Cardinals’ best recruiting classes in years.

Louisville announced in November that Bowen would not play for the Cardinals but added that it would honor his scholarship. He remained enrolled through the fall semester. University spokesman John Karman said Wednesday via text that Bowen did not enroll for the spring semester.

A call and email sent to Bowen’s attorney, Jason Setchen, from The Associated Press were not immediately returned.

The investigation resulted in the October firings of Louisville coach Rick Pitino and athletic director Tom Jurich. Pitino has repeatedly said he did not participate in or know about payments to a recruit’s family.

Bowen would certainly add a boost to the Gamecocks should he return to action.

South Carolina (10-5, 1-2 Southeastern Conference), which made the Final Four last season, is struggling through the early SEC season.

“Brian is an exceptional young man and a basketball player with a very high IQ for the game,” Martin said. “He brings a high-level skill set to the court and will make an immediate impact on our team with him joining us on the practice courts this week.”

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AP Sports Writer Gary Graves in Lexington, Kentucky, contributed to this story.

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For more AP college basketball coverage: http://collegebasketball.ap.org and http://twitter.com/AP_Top25