Mother confronts son’s killer in Mecklenburg courthouse

On a Sunday evening about a year ago, Daniel Roberts drank vodka with friends and then went blasting east on Independence Boulevard at more than 100 mph, swerving through traffic and running red lights until he smashed into the back of an SUV.

On Thursday, Roberts said he was sorry. But he did not get the last word.

As the 29-year-old Charlotte man stood hunched in front of a Mecklenburg County courtroom, two families were at his back: his own and the one belonging to the man he had killed May 25, Barnette White Jr.

Roberts pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and driving while impaired. At the hospital after the crash, his blood alcohol level tested at 0.19, and marijuana was found in his urine.

Assistant District Attorney Anna Greene said Roberts’ Saturn was traveling at 101 mph in a 45-mph zone when it torpedoed into the back of Scott Howard’s SUV near Village Lake Road. White, a passenger in Howard’s Toyota, was thrown from the vehicle and killed. He was 25.

Roberts, who had to be cut out of the wreckage, was seriously injured. Howard and another passenger were treated at a hospital and released.

Under an agreement between defense attorney Jeff Poulsen and Greene, Superior Court Judge Bob Bell sentenced Roberts to between eight and 10 1/2 years in prison and gave him credit for roughly the year he has already served.

Yet before Roberts could be led away, he faced another kind of reckoning – not with the judge but with the mother of his victim.

Paula Carr, crying on and off, waited more than an hour for Roberts to be led into the courtroom. Earlier in the morning, she sat through another case involving a DWI-related fatality. She shook her head.

After the details of the crash that had killed her only child were read to the courtroom and Roberts’ punishment was announced, Carr was given a chance to speak. She rushed to the front of the room and faced Roberts, pushing in so close to the defendants that the courtroom deputies had to move her back.

“I want to know, Mr. Roberts, do you understand that you killed my only child?” she asked in a loud, clear voice.

“Do you have any remorse?” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” Roberts replied, holding back tears.

She gave a half turn toward Roberts’ parents, grandparents and fiancee before turning back to the orange-clad defendant.

You’ve got your family, and they’ve got their son, she told him. “I don’t have my son,” she said slapping her hand with a pop. “I want you to understand that, OK?”

Given his turn to speak, Roberts read from a handwritten statement. He said he was “deeply, deeply sorry for the pain that I have caused. I’m ashamed of myself. I wish I could fix this and make it all better. You will always be in my prayers.”

Carr listened quietly. But her emotions began to roil when Roberts’ grandmother, Gail Mullis, stood to say a few words.

She said her heart bled for Carr and White’s other loved ones on the other side of the courtroom. “I would give my life to bring your son back,” Mullis said.

Carr began to stir, then mumble, when Mullis started talking about her grandson’s good traits, and how she hoped she would still be alive when he was freed from prison so she could hug him again.

Carr angrily turned away. A deputy walked over to ask her to stay calm. When the case ended and the White family was led from the courtroom, Carr’s composure was gone.

Maybe Roberts was a good boy at heart, she said in the corridor, but she didn’t want to hear it. Barnette, she said, was a good boy, too.

Carr’s voice rose as she walked. Then she stopped. “Look at me,” Carr half-shouted to those around her. “My son is gone!”

Roberts’ family, some of them red-eyed with emotion, left separately. His father, David, declined to comment as he and other relatives disappeared behind elevator doors.

A few minutes later, Carr emerged from a room after meeting with Greene, calmer but still trying to put the day in words.

She said she had seen remorse in Roberts, and that had helped. She heard the voice of her dead son urging her to change how she felt.

“It was like, ‘Mom, he didn’t mean to do it. What are you doing? Keep your composure. Don’t you go off,’” Carr said.

Then she sent one last message to Roberts, who was headed to prison but still alive.

“The only thing I want him to do is live his life right,” she said. “He’s got a chance.”

This story was originally published April 30, 2015 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Mother confronts son’s killer in Mecklenburg courthouse."