Eve Carson Autopsy: Shot 5 Times

CHAPEL HILL - Eve Carson held her hand in front of her head as a killer fired a shotgun that sent birdshot through her hand and into her temple, according to an autopsy report released today.

The report confirmed that Carson, the student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill, was shot at least five times by two weapons. In all, she suffered bullet wounds to her right cheek, shoulder, upper arm and buttocks, and shotgun wounds to her right hand and head, according to the report of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

The report did not identify any single shot as the fatal one.

Carson was found March 5 on a residential street not far from campus.

She was lying on her back, tilted onto her left hip, and her arm was bent behind her head, according to the autopsy report. She wore a T-shirt and sweatpants.

The Medical Examiner's Office recovered bullets that lodged in her sinus and another that passed through her right shoulder and lung and small intestine and lodged in her torso. Numerous birdshot pellets and their plastic casing were removed from her skull cavity.

The release of the autopsy report comes three days after a judge ordered the release of search warrants and related documents in the Carson investigation.

While medical tests did not reveal any evidence of sexual assault, the police obtained an account of the crimes from a confidential informant who spoke to one of the two suspects before they were arrested. Here’s what Demario Atwater, one of the suspects, told the informant, according to The News & Observer:

• Ms. Carson was not carjacked as originally suspected. Instead, the two suspects, Mr. Atwater and Lawrence Alvin Lovett Jr., took her from her home. They entered through an open door.
• The three departed in her Toyota Highlander for an A.T.M., where they used her pin number to withdraw cash.
• Then both suspects shot her to death in a street near her home. Neighbors reported hearing shots at 5 a.m.
• Over the next two days, the suspects succeeded in withdrawing $1,400

Both suspects were charged with first degree murder in March and are currently awaiting trial.

The suspect who was arrested early this morning in the murder of University of North Carolina student body president Eve Carson has also been charged in the January killing of a Duke University graduate student, according to ABC News affiliate WTVD.

Video Possible Break in Murder Case

Lawrence Alvin Lovette Jr., 17, was taken into custody after police and SWAT team members surrounded a home where he was reportedly hiding, the Durham Police Department confirmed.

Police negotiators talked with him for an hour before Lovette surrendered at 4:15 a.m., WTVD reported.

Authorities had received a tip that Lovette was inside the house. His arrest came hours after police in Chapel Hill, N.C., announced first-degree murder charges against Lovette and Demario James Atwater, 21, in Carson's March 5 shooting death.

Carson's body was found at the intersection of Hillcrest Circle and Hillcrest Drive in Chapel Hill at approximately 5 a.m. on March 5, 2008.[7] Police could not immediately identify the body, but at 9 a.m. on March 6, 2008 police investigators and the office of the medical examiner identified the body as that of Carson.[8] Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian Curran said that Carson's death appeared to be a random act. Police recovered her car more than a mile away from her body after receiving a tip from a local witness. Police also released images from a security video of a person using Carson's ATM card.[9]

[10] The medical examiner said that Carson had not been sexually assaulted.[1] Carson was shot several times, and according to a confidential informant to Chapel Hill police, both Atwater and Lovette shot her.[11]

Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr. was arrested almost 24 hours after the arrest of a man who, police say, joined him in the murder. Lovette, 17, and Demario James Atwater, 21, were charged on March 11, 2008 with first-degree murder in the crime while Lovette was still at large.[3]

Eve Marie Carson, 22, was elected student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in February 2007. Her term would have ended in April.

A native of Athens, Ga., Eve was born Nov. 19, 1985. She came to Carolina in the fall of 2004 as the recipient of a prestigious Morehead Scholarship. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, she was a pre-medicine student majoring in both political science and biology. As a North Carolina Fellow, she was part of a four-year leadership development program for undergraduates.

While at UNC-Chapel Hill, she was extremely active in both leadership and service roles. As student body president, she was also a member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees. She served as co-president of the Honors Program Student Executive Board and as a member of the Committee on Scholarships, Awards and Student Aide; the Academic Advising Program; and the Chancellor’s committee for University Teaching Awards.

Teaching and working with children were key service interests for Eve. In 2006, she taught science at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School in Chapel Hill as part of UNC’s INSPIRE program, whose mission is to encourage young students to pursue science as an interest. In her junior year, Carson was a tutor at Githens Middle School in Durham. She was also an assistant coach in the Girls on the Run of the Triangle, a character development program for girls ages 8-12 that uses running to teach values and a sense of self.

Eve's service extended well beyond the Triangle, however. In the spring of her sophomore year, she participated in a study abroad in Havana, Cuba, and she spent her summers working and volunteering in Ecuador, Egypt and Ghana as part of the Morehead Summer Enrichment program. "I credit my prior experiences, especially my past two Morehead summers, for preparing me to get along with pretty much whatever comes my way," she wrote in an e-mail posted on the Morehead Web site. On campus, she became involved in Nourish International, an organization started by UNC students in 2002 for hunger relief. Eve served as freshman volunteer coordinator (2004) and co-chair (2005) for the group.

The daughter of Bob and Teresa Carson, Eve was also the student body president of her high school, Clarke Central, in Athens, Ga. When she ran for the same office at Carolina, she was elected with 55 percent of the vote in a runoff with a bigger turnout than the previous year's general election.