Laurence Lovette will appear in court Nov. 28 to face charges for the murder of former UNC student body president Eve Carson, the Herald-Sun reported Thursday.
Prosecutors charged Lovette and Demario Atwater with kidnapping and first-degree murder of Carson, a Morehead Scholar and then-student body president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lovette will appear in Orange County Criminal Superior Court.
Lovette and Atwater were charged with kidnapping Carson, then 22-years-old, from her Chapel Hill home early in the morning March 5, 2008. Investigators said the two men hijacked Carson’s SUV and forced her to withdraw $1,400 from several ATMs. Police said the two men then shot her five times and dumped her body at the intersection of Hillcrest Circle and Hillcrest Road in Chapel Hill.
Lovette was also arrested for the death of a Duke engineering graduate student Abhijit Mahato. Mahato, who was 29-years-old, was shot and killed in his home at the Anderson Apartments near West Campus Jan. 18, 2008.
Lovette faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for both killings. He was 17-years-old at the time of the incidents, so he is ineligible for the death penalty.
Atwater, indicted alongside Lovette, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in September 2010 after pleading guilty to five federal charges related to Carson’s death, including kidnapping and carjacking resulting in death. Atwater avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty.
Orange-Chatham District Attorney Jim Woodall told the Herald-Sun that he expects the case will go to trial, rather than ending in a plea deal like Atwater’s case.
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