RALEIGH -- Detrique Baker was at the doorstep of a future in college basketball that could have transformed his life.
To cross that threshold, though, the sinewy 6-foot-9 teenager needed to trust more in others, believe they would give him a fair shake, his coaches and advocates said.
Early Thursday morning, that all came to an end.
Baker, 18, of 3832 Chandler Ridge Road in Raleigh, was one of four men found dead on the side of Rock Service Station Road just outside Garner, ejected from a 2003 Chevrolet Trailblazer that overturned about 3:50 a.m.
Evan J. Bridges, 18, of 111 Saddle Ridge Court, Garner; Larry D. Evans, 38, of 7401 Trouble Road, Willow Springs; and, Tony C. Smith Jr., 22, of 1113 Southern Oaks Drive, Raleigh, also were killed.
Troopers say the silver SUV was traveling south on Rock Service Station Road at high speed when it zigzagged from the right shoulder to the left, crashed into a ditch and overturned several times before landing against a small grove of trees and a telephone pole. The driver and passengers were thrown from the vehicle. None was wearing a seatbelt, according to Sgt. Jeff Gordon, a state Highway Patrol spokesman.
Troopers rushed there, but identifying the victims took time, Gordon said. None had identification.
Baker, a former Jacksonville High School basketball player who caught the eye of Amateur Athletic Union coaches more than a year ago, had attended Quality Education Academy in Winston-Salem and Mount Zion Christian Academy in Durham, two schools known as training grounds for elite prep basketball players.
A tattoo of a basketball on Baker's chest, with his birth date in the center, and another tattoo of his first name helped officers identify the teen. "Marcia," his mother's name, was tattooed on his right shoulder.
Marcia Baker said her son and Smith, a former Middle Creek High School student who had been working for his high school equivalency diploma at Wake Technical Community College, had been friends for a while. She was not familiar with the others in the SUV.
Baker said her son stopped by her Raleigh apartment about 11 p.m. Wednesday with a different friend, and they ate a late-night meal before leaving about midnight to hang out with friends, she said. She did not know where they were going.
It was unclear late Thursday how all four men ended up in the Trailblazer.
Unanswered questions
Evans, his family said, worked for a construction company, laying asphalt. He had been scheduled to work early Thursday morning. His mother, Mary Roberson, 57, was surprised her son had been out so late. Evans liked to party sometimes and have a good time, his mother said, but he usually reserved late nights for the weekends.
Evans was fun-loving, his mother said. He liked to watch cartoons and crack a good joke.
Troopers did not know late Thursday whether the accident was alcohol-related or who was driving.
As law enforcement officials and medical examiners tried to piece together what happened in the early hours of Thursday morning, family and friends tried to grasp the fact of four lives lost, in a moment, in a single-vehicle wreck.
"It is unusual to have four people die in a single-vehicle wreck, but it is nothing that is unheard of," Gordon said.
In May, four members of a South Carolina family died when their sport utility vehicle ran off Interstate 95 in Nash County and overturned. In North Carolina, according to statistics from the UNC-Chapel Hill Highway Research Center, there were 1,152 rollover fatalities from 2001 to 2008.
Families remember
At Smith's home and Evans' home, several miles apart in Wake County, family and friends found solace in each other as they shared memories.
Smith, family said, was a guy with a quick smile who always made it a point to hug people.
"I remember him as a bubbly spirit," said Carolyn Johnson, 40, Smith's cousin, who was visiting from Angier.
Bridges, a former Athens Drive High School student who is the great-nephew of Evans' stepfather, would come out to Willow Springs occasionally for family cookouts. The teen had a recent brush with the law and was put on probation for larceny, but a North Carolina Department of Correction website said he had not complied with the terms of his probation supervision and was being sought as an absconder.
It was unclear how Bridges knew Smith and Baker.
Whether it was on the basketball court or off, Baker made friends easily, according to his mother.
In recent months, coaches had been trying to get Baker to focus more on sports and the classroom. His mother and coaches said he needed to get his grades up to play basketball at some of the colleges he had hoped to attend. Junior colleges in Iowa, North Dakota, Missouri and Kansas had offered Baker a spot on their teams.
Dave Telep, a national basketball recruiting analyst in Wake Forest, said Baker, a power forward with tremendous leaping ability, had the potential to be a major player at a midlevel Division I college basketball program.
"He had a future," Telep said.
Tony Edwards, the head coach of CP3, one of the country's elite AAU basketball teams, based in Winston-Salem, agreed. Baker had an arm-span of nearly 7 feet and an extraordinary leaping ability, Edwards said, raw talents that could have helped him get to junior college and beyond.
"The biggest piece was his grades," Edwards said. "I spent a lot of time talking with Detrique. He never thought that people would give him a fair chance. He was very, very talented. He could play."
News researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.
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