Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 9, 1995 TAG: 9509110065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After Charlie V. Carter was stabbed in the neck, he grabbed his bottle of wine and sat down on the couch to watch television.
His girlfriend, Brenda G. Parker, figured she hadn't done much harm with the small knife she had just used when Carter lunged at her with a screwdriver. So she tossed him a towel and left the tiny basement apartment they shared on Eighth Street in Northwest Roanoke.
Several hours later, when she returned and found Carter, 68, lying on the floor, Parker assumed that he had passed out from drinking. Mindful of his earlier tantrum, she warned two guests not to wake him up.
Parker and two men spent the next few hours drinking beer and talking. When Parker finally when to check on Carter, she found his body stiff and cold.
"She was overwhelmed when it dawned on her that she had killed him," Parker's attorney, Assistant Public Defender Marian Kelley, said Friday as she and Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell provided an uncontested summary of the evidence in Roanoke Circuit Court.
Although Parker realized that she had unintentionally killed Parker on May 4, she did not become a suspect until four days later.
After attempting suicide by overdosing on a large amount of prescription medication, Parker was taken to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where she confessed to two nurses. The hospital then called police, and Parker, 34, was charged with murder.
But under a plea agreement reached Friday, the charge was reduced to involuntary manslaughter. In exchange for Parker's no-contest plea, Caldwell agreed to ask for no more than five years in prison when she is sentenced Oct. 20.
In agreeing to reduce the charge, Caldwell did not contest Parker's account that Carter often was abusive during their relationship and that he threatened her with a screwdriver the morning he was killed.
Carter had recently been paroled from prison after being sentenced to 22 years for killing his girlfriend in 1983.
While Carter may have had a reputation among his drinking buddies as a generous man for sharing his wine, Kelley said, he was better known to Parker as a jealous mate with a violent streak.
At the time of his death, Carter had a blood-alcohol content of .25 percent, more than three times the level at which someone is considered too drunk to drive.
Parker also was drinking at the time, Kelley said, and "she does not remember cutting him, and she certainly never meant to kill him."
by CNB