Lovette Gets Life Term In Eve Carson's Murder

Posted on Dec. 20, 2011

Laurence Alvin Lovette will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole for the kidnapping, robbing and murdering of Eve Carson ’08.

A jury deliberated for about three hours after hearing testimony for seven and a half days in Orange County Superior Court. Lovette was not eligible for the death penalty because he was under age at the time of the crime in March 2008.

Both Lovette and Carson’s parents, who attended throughout the trial, declined to speak before Lovette was sentenced.

Carson, who was student body president and two months away from her graduation, was forced into her vehicle by Lovette and an accomplice and forced to withdraw money from her bank account through an ATM. She was shot to death and left in a Chapel Hill neighborhood just off Franklin Street about a mile from her house.

Demario James Atwater went to prison for life for the crimes in September 2010. He had pleaded guilty to carjacking, kidnapping and weapons charges in federal court in April 2010, and was sentenced to a life sentence for kidnapping resulting in death, a life sentence and two 10-year sentences on carjacking and weapons charges, and a 10-year sentence for discharging a weapon resulting in death.

Carson’s murder occasioned an outpouring of grief and tributes on the campus where she was known to many and very popular both for her individual spirit and her willingness to work on behalf of others.

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More online…

• Lovette Pleads Guilty in Eve Carson Murder
  News report from November 2011
• Second Suspect in Carson Murder Faces Trial
  News report from October 2011
• Atwater Gets Federal Life Sentence in Carson’s Murder
  News report from September 2010
• Atwater Pleads to State Charges in Murder of Eve Carson
  News report from May 2010
• Carolina Dedicates Garden to Memory of Eve Carson
  News report from March 2010
• GAA Honors Three With Distinguished Young Alumni Awards
  News report from October 2009
• Ceremony Remembers, Celebrates Eve Carson
  News report from March 2009
• ‘Eve’s Mantle has Been Passed to Us’
  An In Memoriam department feature from the Carolina Alumni Review that appeared in the May/June 2008 issue. It is available online to Carolina Alumni members.
• Eve Carson’s biography
• First Eve Marie Carson Scholarship Awarded
  News report from February 2009
• Two Charged In Eve Carson’s Death;  Second Charged Also in Duke Killing
  News report from April 1, 2008
• Videos of “A Celebration of the Life of Eve Carson 1985-2008”

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