Feb. 11--RALEIGH -- Just before he hung up the phone Saturday morning after talking with a 911 dispatcher, Adam Wade Carter's uncle told his suicidal nephew to put away the knife he had been carrying in his back pocket.
"Put the knife down Adam," the uncle said.
Carter, 25, apparently did not relinquish the weapon.
A Wake County sheriff's deputy who had been dispatched to the two-story home in the Forest Trails subdivision in northwest Raleigh shot and killed Carter. The Sheriff's Department says Carter confronted the law officer with a knife in front of the house where he lived at 5425 Live Oak Trail.
Sheriff's spokeswoman Phyllis Stephens said First Class Deputy Tavares Thompson shot Carter when Carter confronted him with a knife as he arrived at the call about 9:30 a.m.
Thompson has been on the sheriff's force since March 2007. He has been placed on administrative duty pending an investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation, Stephens said.
Authorities said Carter was apparently shot in the chest. Emergency workers transported him to WakeMed in Raleigh, where he died, the sheriff's office reported.
Nearly 15 minutes before the shooting, a man who identified himself as Carter's uncle called 911 to report that his nephew wanted to be admitted to Holly Hill Hospital in Raleigh for mental health treatment.
"He was in detox last week," Carter's uncle told the emergency dispatcher. "He needs some help. He's threatening to slit his wrists."
Carter's uncle told the dispatcher that Carter had injured his forehead earlier that morning when he fell down after drinking cooking wine.
"I need to get him somewhere. He's crying out for help," Carter's uncle said on a 911 recording released Saturday by the Wake County Sheriff's Office.
The dispatcher asked to speak with Carter. The young man told the dispatcher that he was "not great" and later said it had been a "a bad year -- a bad 10 years."
"I'm gonna cut my [expletive] veins. I'm gonna cut each wrist and bleed out," Carter said. "I'm running a warm bathtub."
Carter told the dispatcher that he had beaten his wife and cheated on her. The dispatcher tried to reassure Carter that he was a good person.
"I'm not a good person. Don't ever call me that again," the anguished man replied.
Carter's death marked the second this month involving members of law enforcement responding to reports of a suicide threat.
On Monday, a mental health professional called 911 after one of her clients, Steven Gregory Meyer, threatened to kill others and himself.
Meyer, 48, fired at Raleigh police officers and wounded one later that morning during a standoff at his Brier Creek apartment. Police later found Meyer dead inside of his apartment from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
Carter's death also marks the third shooting by Wake County deputies of a person with mental health issues over the past 14 months.
On Nov. 18, Wake deputies shot and killed Mark Brandon Zareski, 56, of Wendell during a shootout with law officers at his home. The deputies had arrived at Zareski's home after receiving 911 reports of a man beating his wife so badly she needed to be hospitalized.
When deputies arrived at the residence Zareski starting firing at them. A deputy, Jeff Martin, was wounded during the exchange of gunfire.
On Dec. 18, 2010, Wake deputies shot and killed Cody Charles Knisley, 23, in the front yard of his home outside of Wake Forest. Authorities say Knisley had used an ax to hold his wife and child against their will. When deputies arrived at the home, they said Knisley emerged from the front door of his mobile home, wielding the tool.
Three Wake deputies shot Knisley nine times, the state medical examiner's office reported.
The address where Saturday's shooting occurred is a single-family home in the Forest Trail Estates subdivision, near Leesville Road High School.
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Copyright 2012 - The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
