Murder trial entering second week
Published 11:05 am Thursday, January 24, 2019
Testimony is expected to end this week in the first-degree murder trial of Carlos Lowery, accused of killing Terry Smoot on Oct. 25, 2016.
Prosecutors called police officers, EMTs, a pathologist and a person they said found Mr. Smoot along the railroad tracks near Depot Street.
“Terry Smoot suffered an excruciating, terrible death,” Assistant District Attorney Kaitlyn Jones said in her opening statement. She is prosecuting the case along with Alan B. Martin.
Smoot, she said, suffered 11 broken ribs on the back side, and was hit so violently that ribs were displaced from the spine. “Terry Smoot was hit so hard that the blood vessels that connected his right kidney to his circulatory system” cause the kidney to become unattached, and float.
He also suffered scrapes and bruises all over his body, a cut to the lip, cuts to the lungs and liver.
“Terry Smoot suffered severe injures from head to toe, inside and out,” she said. “All of the injuries culminated in Mr. Smoot’s death.”
She said the jury would hear testimony that Edward Pozo, Smoot’s friend, found him along the railroad tracks and asked him to get his family, naming his attacker.
“Ed, help me,” Jones said Smoot called as Pozo crossed the railroad track on his way home from work. “Red beat me up. He knew Red was a nickname of Carlos Lowery.”
She said that Smoot also identified Lowery as his attacker to police officers who first arrived on the scene.
As police canvassed the neighborhood during their investigation of the attack, Jones said they came across Lowery, at a house along with Norris Hudson. Neither claimed at the time to know who Carlos Lowery was. Months later, police recognized Lowery from that first encounter the evening of the attack, Jones said.
Lowery’s attorney, Jerry Jordan, had little to say to the jury, which includes nine women and three men.
“They will have to prove that stuff beyond a reasonable doubt,” Jordan said. “At the end of the trial, you’re going to have more questions than answers.”
He said there were “several people in the area” the evening of the attack.
Smoot was taken to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center after the attack, where he died a few hours later.