Durham sets session on probation

Failure to keep up with two now accused of murder prompts crime Cabinet meeting

DURHAM -- Durham leaders have called a special crime Cabinet meeting to discuss the probation system's failure to keep tabs on two offenders now accused of murder.

Ellen Reckhow, chairwoman of the Durham County Board of Commissioners, set the meeting for April 11, nearly a month before the Durham crime Cabinet was due to meet again.

"We've got thousands of people on probation in our community, and we need to to make sure they're being monitored adequately," Reckhow said.

She said she first became concerned nearly two weeks ago when Durham residents Laurence Alvin Lovette, 17, and Demario Atwater, 21, were charged with murdering Eve Carson, the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president. Each was on probation for other offenses.

Reckhow said she called local offices with questions but was passed from one office to the next until she got in touch with Robert Guy, head of the state Division of Community Corrections, which oversees offenders on probation and parole.

The state Department of Correction is investigating the handling of the cases, a review that already has turned up problems.

That investigation is expected to be done this week or early next week, according to Guy and Keith Acree, the Correction Department spokesman.

When Durham officials meet April 11, Reckhow said, Division of Community Corrections officials plan to be there.

"We're looking forward to hearing the results of the investigation and finding out what corrective actions can be taken," she said.

In Durham, probation records show that the officer assigned to the Lovette case in January never met with the teen.

Officer Chalita N. Thomas was having problems of her own.

In December she was charged with driving while impaired for a second time, an offense that forced a change in job status.

Thomas, according to department of corrections officials, was placed on administrative duty March 7, two days after Carson was found slain in Chapel Hill.

Lovette also stands accused of first-degree murder in the slaying of Abhijit Mahato, a Duke University graduate student found shot to death in January, two days after the teen's probationary period began.

A search warrant returned in the Mahato case this week details how a friend of Lovette's told Durham County sheriff's investigators where to find him March 13, the day he was charged in both homicides.

Part of the Department of Corrections investigation will look at why the Durham probation office waited so long after Thomas' DWI charge in Wake County to put her on administrative duty.

Atwater, the other suspect in the Carson case, was under the Wake County probation office's watch, and a quick review of his case shows lax oversight, too, corrections officials say.

On Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Carl Fox said he had ordered sealed one or two search warrants related to the Carson investigation at the request of law enforcement. Fox said he agreed with investigators that the information could hinder the investigation if it became public. He said requests to seal search warrants were "very rare."

(Staff writer Samuel Spies contributed to this report.)