Keith Antoine Carter initially told police that he wasn't at the Red Rooster nightclub when Sgt. Howard Plouff was shot three years ago, a detective with the Winston-Salem Police Department testified yesterday in Forsyth Superior Court.
Four days after the shooting, two detectives took Carter in for questioning at the Winston-Salem Police Department. He wasn't under arrest, Winston-Salem Detective Phillip Cox told the court.
Cox said he asked Carter on the way to the police station if he had been at the Red Rooster when "all the craziness happened."
Carter said he left the nightclub at 1 a.m. on Feb. 23, 2007, with his girlfriend, Cox said.
Carter is charged with first-degree murder in Plouff's death. He is accused of fatally shooting Plouff on Feb. 23, 2007, outside the former Red Rooster nightclub on Jonestown Road.
Plouff had gone to the nightclub to help off-duty officers trying to break up a fight that had spilled into the parking lot. He was shot in the neck as he moved among the crowd and later died at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
In court yesterday, Cox testified that he also had noticed a cut under Carter's right eye and asked him how he was injured.
Carter said that four young men had robbed him earlier in the week, Cox testified.
In opening statements Thursday, Assistant District Attorney David Hall said that Carter was inside the nightclub when fights broke out and that Carter had thrown a bar stool that hit another man.
Hall said that a group of people jumped Carter and that a friend managed to pull Carter out and take him outside. Carter went to his car, pulled out a 9 mm handgun, loaded it, and fired into a crowd seven times, Hall said. One of the bullets struck Plouff, hitting the carotid artery and jugular vein.
In other testimony yesterday, Special Agent Chris Olson of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said that Carter legally purchased a 9 mm handgun in May 2006 at Apple Pawn Shop in downtown Winston-Salem after obtaining a pistol permit from the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office.
Under cross-examination by Carter's attorney David Freedman, Olson said that Carter would not have been able to legally buy a handgun if a background check had turned up any felony convictions.
Freedman argued Thursday in opening statements that Carter was able to buy a handgun because he was in good standing in the community and had no criminal record.
But under re-examination by prosecutors, Olson said that it is illegal to carry a handgun without a concealed weapons permit, which prosecutors implied Carter did not have.
Judge William Z. Wood of Forsyth Superior Court dismissed the jury about 4 p.m. after Hall told him that he would be calling a witness who would be testifying at length. The trial will resume at 9:30 Monday morning.
mhewlett@wsjournal.com | 727-7326
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