Rae Carruth was a first-round draft pick wide receiver playing for the Carolina Panthers. He signed a $3.7 million, four-year deal to play for them. He even got a $1.3 million signing bonus. He was handsome, talented and a ladies man. He was living the life. He had a college sweetheart with whom he had a child and was paying child support. At some point he began dating a young lady, Cherica Adams. And when birth control isn’t practiced, we all know what happens. Cherica became pregnant, and Rae was not too thrilled about it.
They went out on a date to the movies. She drove her car and he drove his. On the way back from the movie, Rae suddenly stopped his car causing Cherica to stop hers. A car pulled alongside her and gunshots rang out. Cherica lived long enough to call 911 and tell them that her baby’s daddy had set her up.
The baby she carried lived but was born suffering from brain damage and cerebral palsy. Rae Carruth was found guilty and served almost 20 years in prison.
If you follow the news like I do, there has been a plethora of stories as of late coming from across the country regarding women who have been killed by their baby’s daddy. In Memphis, Tennessee, 25-year-old Brandon Isabel allegedly shoots his baby’s mama and tosses his 2-day-old infant into the freezing cold Mississippi River.
Here in Chicago last year, 19-year-old Yarianna Wheeler was found floating in Lake Michigan just south of Waukegan. Her killer is alleged to be her boyfriend, Robert Drummond, 21. Last month, pregnant Derricka Patrick was shot and killed while sitting in a car in front of her home. No suspects have been identified as of yet, but she was pregnant. And then we have the postal worker, Kiera Coles, who was 3 months pregnant when she disappeared. Again the baby’s daddy is the main suspect, but he’s booked town and moved down South.
All one has to do is Google “pregnant woman killed” and story after story pops up all across the country. I don’t know if it’s always the fear of child support, but these women are all pregnant and they’re ending up dead. Is the fear of child support now such that men think their only option is to kill the mother and/or the child? What was supposed to be the solution to welfare taking care of children and putting the responsibility on the father has now morphed and become the unintended consequence of murder as the solution.
I hope one of our federal legislators takes on this issue. Our society needs to begin to look for solutions so that women don’t end up dead and baby’s daddy’s don’t end up being the alleged killer.
For no other reason than this: the children don’t deserve what is happening to them.
