Guilty plea in shooting death of teen soccer player in Raleigh hotel room

Valerie Clark broke down in tears in a Wake County courtroom Monday as she described what her life has been like since the bizarre death of her only child.

Nathan Andrew Clark was 13 years old, a middle schooler with one foot pointed toward a promising adulthood and the other very much still planted in childhood.

The Lewisville teen was an elite soccer player who usually had a soccer ball just a toe touch away, whether he was at school or home, dribbling it off the couch. He was a striving Boy Scout who was a few merit badges and a final project away from earning the Eagle Scout rank.

“There is no easy way to describe Nathan,” an emotional Clark told Superior Court Judge Reuben Young. “How do I explain the joy that flowed from such a small package?”

Young had just accepted a plea agreement for Randall Vater, the man who mistakenly fired a gun at the Comfort Suites on Corporation Drive in Raleigh, where Nathan Clark’s life ended.

Nathan was lying on a bed in a hotel room, where his parents and a friend were staying while in Wake County for a Capital Area Soccer League tournament, when a bullet from the adjacent room pierced the wall.

“The experience we endured the night of November 14, 2014, was a nightmare,” Charlie Clark recounted before the judge sentenced Vater to at least 11 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. “My wife got up to check on him after hearing what sounded like gurgling water and then yelled for me. I went over to see my son bleeding terribly. I could not understand how this had happened in our locked hotel room with no items for Nathan to have hit his head on.”

The next minutes were chaotic. The Clarks sent Nathan’s friend down the hotel hallway to find Charlie Clark’s father. Valerie Clark called for help. They all tried to save Nathan, but nothing could be done. The bullet had struck the boy’s head. There would be no more soccer tournaments, no more father-son Scout trips, no more helicopter rides or flights where he took the controls of the airplane.

“Though I try not to dwell on what happened in that room, I may never shake the images, smells, sounds, confusion and pain that randomly come back to me in all their horror,” Nathan’s father told the judge.

Assistant District Attorney Howard Cummings laid out the details of what happened in the hotel room next door at a hearing where many in the courtroom gallery wiped tears and quietly sniffled.

Vater, a 43-year-old man from Knightdale, had a lengthy criminal record when he and a female friend checked into the hotel.

Vater had been out of prison for less than three weeks after spending half a year behind bars for a domestic violence charge.

The case has raised questions about why Vater, a man with 28 convictions – six of which were felonies – had access to a gun.

Cummings explained that the gun belonged to Vater’s friend, who had been assaulted once and had obtained a concealed weapons permit to carry the Springfield XD 9 mm.

That night, the woman had placed the gun on a bedside table and gone to bed.

Cummings noted that the gun does not have a traditional safety lock, and when Vater put his hand around the grip he unintentionally fired the gun.

Initially, Vater tried to get the woman he was with to say she fired the gun, Cummings told the judge as he laid out some of the evidence that prosecutors would have presented had the case gone to trial. Vater also tried to flee the hotel, but his car was blocked by the fire truck that responded to the emergency call from Nathan’s parents.

“Every day I miss his laugh, his smile, the way he wrapped himself in the green blanket I knitted for him, the sound of him constantly kicking a soccer ball against the couch, waltzing with him in the kitchen when no one was looking, his dad making him belly laugh like no one else could,” Valerie Clark recalled.

There are days when the depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder become too much for Valerie Clark, she said, and she prefers to curl up inside her house and let the tears flow and flow. Through her faith and the friendships and bonds built through sports teams, Scouts and Calvary Baptist Day School and church, Nathan’s parents have found strength.

Still, there are challenges.

“I miss his daily hugs and ‘love you Mom’ as he went about his day,” Valerie Clark told the judge.

Before sentencing Vater to at least 11 years and five months in prison for the involuntary manslaughter conviction and his plea to being a habitual felon, the judge offered his condolences to the Clarks.

“There is a saying that everyone dies, but not everyone lives,” Young said. “It is clear to me that Nathan lived quite right.”

Young added that Nathan would “continue to live” through the many in the courtroom who heard about the boy’s many accomplishments.

Vater did not apologize to the Clarks, but his attorney, Johnny Gaskins, offered his condolences on behalf of himself and his client.

As a bailiff ushered Vater out of the courtroom in the orange and white jail jumpsuit, the Clarks rose to many hugs and warm wishes from friends and supporters.

As they left the courtroom, aware of how quickly life can change, Charlie Clark’s words to the judge that morning echoed through the minds of many.

“Nathan will be forever missed,” Charlie Clark told Young in summary. “He had much to offer us, our country, and our world. Valerie and I will not see him get his driver’s license. We will not see him take a girl on a date. We will not see him have his first professional job, get married, or have children. … We will always miss his smile and his contagious laughter. We will always miss Nathan, our only child and joy of our lives.”

This story was originally published June 27, 2016 at 10:51 AM with the headline "Guilty plea in shooting death of teen soccer player in Raleigh hotel room."