New Kent County man wanted in Va. and Fla. is arrested in Alabama

A New Kent County man wanted in Virginia and Florida on drug and firearms charges was arrested yesterday in a rural, south Alabama community as he begged a 911 operator not to be harmed.

"He was talking on his cell phone to 911, begging not to be shot, that he had no weapons," said Deputy U.S. Marshal Ryan Karle, who was part of a 20-member team that captured John Steven Carter in the 2 a.m. raid.

"We're just glad we were able to take a man this dangerous and get him off the streets," said police Lt. Ricky Morgan of the Geneva, Ala., police department.

Carter, 59, surrendered peacefully and in his first statements told Morgan, "I'm going to die in prison."

The arrest ended more than four years on the run for Carter, a Virginia native who used various aliases and was able to elude capture in New Kent last fall despite housing a million-dollar marijuana-growing operation on the second floor of his rented Lanexa home.

He disappeared Oct. 14 after the shooting death of a Williamsburg-area teenager who was part of a group that had come to Carter's home for drugs and guns. Carter faces drug and weapons charges and a count of illegally disposing of the young man's body.

At the time, Carter was wanted in Florida on federal and state indictments for weapons and drug violations dating back four years.

Karle said Carter agreed to extradition at an appearance in Montgomery, Ala., yesterday before a U.S. magistrate. He will be transported to Florida in the next several days to stand trial.

The arrest took place in the same Alabama area where a gunman last week killed 10 people, including several family members. But Morgan said the increased police presence didn't play a role in Carter's arrest.

"It was the economy more than anything. The people who called in the information wanted the reward money," he said, referring to a call to the area's Crime Stoppers tip line Friday.

Carter was caught in an abandoned trailer across the street from the trailer where he was living with a girlfriend.

Carter, who used the alias Joe Bennet in Alabama, has been on the run for at least four years from federal authorities in Florida. He was charged with growing marijuana.

The Virginia native apparently fled back home, settling in the Lanexa area of New Kent in a two-story rental home where he used the name William J. Benton Jr., a now-deceased friend. He lived alone.

Carter's cover ended Oct. 14, when four Williamsburg-area young men tried to break into his house. That break-in ended in the shooting death of Christopher Greene, an 18-year-old high school athlete from York County.

Greene's body was found covered with a tarp at the rear of the house just off U.S. 60; search warrants stated that Carter fired on Greene after the young man pulled a shotgun on him and kicked in the back door.

"We're taking steps to notify the young man's family of the arrest," New Kent Chief Deputy J.S. McLaughlin Jr. said.

Two weeks after the shooting. New Kent investigators discovered a marijuana-growing operation behind fake wall partitions on the second floor of Carter's house; the marijuana had a street value of about $1 million, authorities said.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .