Former Carolina Panther Rae Carruth will be released from prison in less than two weeks, according to the Department of Public Safety.

Carruth, whose real name is Rae Wiggins, is scheduled to be released from the Sampson Correction Facility in Clinton on Oct. 22.

In 2001, the star Carolina Panthers wide receiver was convicted of charges related to the murder of Cherica Adams, a 24-year-old who was seven months pregnant with his child.

She was shot four times while driving her BMW by someone Carruth hired to pull the trigger.

The story made national and international news.

He was arrested twice in the months after the shooting; first, in November 1999 on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder, among other charges.

He was arrested a second time a month later, in December 1999, after Adams died. FBI agents found Carruth hiding in the trunk of a car in the parking lot of a Best Western hotel in Tennessee.

A little more than a year later, in January 2001, Carruth was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, shooting into an occupied dwelling and using an instrument to destroy an unborn child. He was found not guilty of the first-degree murder charge.

He was sentenced to 18 to 24 years in prison.