DURHAM, N.C. ? Two days before Eve Carson was shot near UNC-Chapel Hill, a man now charged in her killing showed up at a Wake County court for a probation violation hearing that could have landed him in jail, officials said Thursday.

The hearing for Demario James Atwater never happened because of a paperwork mistake, said Robert Lee Guy, director of the state Division of Community Corrections. Court and law enforcement officials have begun two internal investigations – one in the state Department of Correction and another in the Wake County courts.

The other suspect in the shooting, Laurence Alvin Lovette, 17, also was on probation. Law officers arrested him before dawn Thursday in Durham and charged him with first-degree murder in the death of Carson, the UNC student body president.

They also charged Lovette with first-degree murder in the Jan. 18 slaying of a Duke University graduate student. The student, Abhijit Mahato, was found dead in his Durham apartment during what police described as a citywide robbery spree. Durham investigators would not say why Lovette was charged in a case that seemed to have been resolved weeks earlier with the arrest of four people.

Efforts to reach Lovette’s relatives were unsuccessful Thursday. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer.

Both suspects had significant legal trouble before Carson’s death.

Lovette, who dropped out of Jordan High School last year, was convicted Jan. 16 in Durham County of breaking into a house and stealing credit cards. He was put on 24 months of probation and would have had to check in with his probation officer every three months or so, said Keith Acree, spokesman for the Department of Correction.

Atwater, 21, a 2002 Jordan High dropout, was on probation stemming from a 2005 conviction in Wake County for misdemeanor breaking and entering and felonious larceny. For the next three years Atwater was to check in with a probation officer, Acree said.

Acree would not divulge the names of the correction officers assigned to the two cases, nor would he say when the last check-ins were.

However, Lovette was arrested during his probationary period, and Atwater was convicted. Atwater’s crime was serious enough that he should have been back in court immediately, Correction Department officials said.

Guy said his main concern was not what happened earlier this month but why it took so long to arrest Atwater on the probation violation in the first place.