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| Friday, September 1 Associated Press | |||
| CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Fred Lane's wife told a 911 operator that
her husband choked and hit her and said her baby wasn't his child
before she fatally shot the NFL running back in their home,
according to a police recording released Tuesday.
The 11-minute tape of the July 6 telephone conversation between
Deidra Lane and the operator was released by Charlotte-Mecklenburg
police one week after murder charges were filed against her in her
husband's death.
Deidra Lane told an operator that she shot her husband twice,
minutes after he walked through the door of their suburban
Charlotte home, according to tapes released to the Charlotte
Observer.
"I was standing here and he came in. I just had the baby seven
days ago," Lane says on the tape, screaming and sobbing. "And he
came in and he started choking me. He was like, 'That baby's not
mine.' He started hitting me. He just got shot because he wouldn't
leave me alone. I kept telling him to stop."
Deidra Lane, 25, turned herself in to police Aug. 23. She is
free on $100,000 bond while she awaits a murder trial in the death
of the former Carolina Panthers player. She could get life in
prison or the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.
Police had been fighting a judge's order to release the tape to
the media, but they decided to make it public Tuesday.
"We thought it was just time," police attorney Mark Newbold
told the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, declining to elaborate.
Deidra Lane's attorney, Henderson Hill, and Mecklenburg County
Assistant District Attorney Marsha Goodenow, who is prosecuting the
case, both declined comment on the tape.
The tape covered the time from when she called 911 until police
were inside her home. After she spoke with the 911 operator, Deidra
Lane spent several hours giving police a voluntary statement about
the shooting.
The 911 operator on the tape repeatedly tells a hysterical
Deidra Lane to take a deep breath, calm down and tell her what
happened.
"I think I shot him in the chest or stomach and I think I just
shot him again. I don't know. Please send somebody. There is blood
everywhere. There is blood all over me."
The operator asks if he is breathing.
"I don't know. I didn't go near him," she responds. "I'm
sorry Pilarr. ... I'm sorry," she says, speaking to her baby, born
a week before the shooting. She told the operator that she's
nursing the baby.
Later, she told the operator: "He just walked in the door like
two or three or four minutes ago. He wasn't even here that long. I
was just coming back from the kitchen and he just said, 'Someone
told me that's not my baby.' I don't even know if he dropped his
luggage or not."
Prosecutors said last week during a bond hearing that Deidra
Lane shot her husband to collect on a $5 million life insurance
policy.
Defense attorney Henderson Hill said after the hearing Deidra
Lane will present a much different picture of the facts at trial.
On the 911 tape, she says, "I was so scared, I just shot him
again."
She also tells the operator her husband had assaulted her
before.
"It was in the paper once, but I denied it. I mean I didn't
really tell my friends know. But I was so embarrassed because of
who he is," she said. "He always told me if I ever told anybody,
he'd make it worse and I'd ruin his career."
In March, Deidra Lane filed a domestic violence complaint
against Fred Lane, accusing her husband of snatching a necklace
from her neck during an argument. But she later said her husband
"never put his hands on me."
| ALSO SEE
Death penalty sought for Fred Lane's widowLane's wife free on $100K bond in murder case | ||