Former Panthers Wide Receiver Rae Carruth Released From Prison

Carruth was released from Sampson Correctional Institution in Clinton, N.C after serving almost 17 years for conspiring to kill his pregnant girlfriend,.

Former Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth was released from a North Carolina prison on Monday morning, serving almost two decades for conspiring to kill his pregnant girlfriend.

Carruth walked out the front gates at the Sampson Correctional Institution in Clinton, North Carolina, shortly after 8 a.m. and got into a white SUV that was waiting for him.

He will have post-release supervision for the next nine months, where he will have to meet with a probation officer, according to WTVD.

Carruth was also convicted of shooting into an occupied vehicle and using an instrument to destroy an unborn child in connection with the death of 24-year–old Cherica Adams. He was found not guilty of first-degree murder.

Adams was seven months pregnant at the time of the shooting on Nov. 16, 1999.

She was driving her vehicle in Charlotte after coming from a movie date with Carruth, when another vehicle pulled up beside her and she shot her four times. She died a month later.

A son, Chancellor Lee Adams, was born prematurely and has cerebral palsy. He will turn 19 next month and has been raised by Cherica Adams' mother, Saundra.

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Carruth apologized for his role in the murder and has said that he wants a relationship with his son.

"I'm excited about just being out of here. I'm nervous just about how I'll be received by the public,” Carruth said in an phone interview with WSOC-TV. "I still have to work. I still have to live. I have to exist out there and it just seems like there is so much hate and negativity toward me. I'm actually some what frightened."

Saundra Adams says Carruth won't be receiving custody of his son.

"I've forgiven Rae already, but to have any type of relationship with him, there does have to be some repentance," Adams said to the Charlotte Observer. "And I think this opens the door. But I can say definitively he's not ever going to have custody of Chancellor."

The 44-year-old Carruth was originally sentenced to 18 to 24 years in 2001, after authorities said he hired Van Brett Watkins and Michael Kennedy to kill Adams.

Watkins is serving a minimum of 40–year sentence and is not scheduled to be released from prison until 2046, while Kennedy and another accomplice Stanley Abraham, have served their time and been released from prison.