MOTHER, TEEN SHARED MARIJUANA

Hicks Admits 'Total Mistake'

GARNER - Kimberly Hicks admits she shared marijuana and alcohol with
her 16-year-old daughter Erica the day before she took a lethal mix of
hard drugs last fall, but she says she had no idea her daughter was
taking narcotics. But Erica's friends knew. They said the popular
cheerleader and varsity softball player had been using cocaine since
January 2005.

On Monday, Wake County District Court Judge Craig Croom found that a
16-year-old Cary teen who gave Erica Hicks ecstasy was responsible for
her death. Medical examiners also found traces of cocaine and
methamphetamine in Hicks' body.

The Cary teen is expected to be sentenced today.

Croom came down hard on parents on both sides of the case who
tolerated their children's drug abuse. The judge said the case was
about parental responsibility, as the two-week trial revealed
teenagers using marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy,
heroin and crack.

"We have got to stop minimizing this," Croom told the parents. "Or
there will be more folks like [the Cary teen] or more children like
Erica, whose parents are sitting here watching a child on trial for
her murder."

The night before Erica Hicks died in October 2005, her mother rolled
two marijuana joints and smoked it with her daughter and the child's
underage friends who stayed overnight in her home after attending a
Cary High School football game. Kimberly Hicks, 43, also allowed Erica
and her friends to share a beer. Her daughter later went into the
kitchen and sipped from a goblet of wine.

"That was one time and one time only that anything like that had ever
happened in this house," Kimberly Hicks said. "It was a total mistake
that I wish had never happened."

Like his former wife, Erica's father, Charles Edward "Ed" Hicks of
Cary, said his daughter was not a heavy drug user. Ed Hicks said his
daughter often stopped by his boat repair shop for spending money.

"I know in my heart that Erica was not a full-time drug user," said Ed
Hicks, a Vietnam veteran. "I monitored her myself."

Kimberly Hicks agreed. "I never knew she was doing anything other than
smoking pot," she said this week.

Ed and Kimberly Hicks both grew up in Garner and had two daughters.
Their oldest child, Stephanie, is a 20-year-old junior at East
Carolina University.

Ed Hicks, 58, was irate after finding out that his former wife had
shared marijuana with his daughter and allowed her to have alcohol the
night before she ingested more drugs that triggered a seizure and led
to her death.

"I questioned her myself. I questioned her hard," Ed Hicks said. "Why
in the world would you do that to her?"

Ed Hicks said Kimberly Hicks told him that she was trying to teach the
teens a lesson about drugs. "She's got to live with that," he said.

Ed Hicks also questioned Erica's older sister about his youngest
daughter's drug use.

"I questioned her hard," Hicks said. "She said Erica had done ecstasy
twice. That second time killed her."

Erica Hicks was a "major popular cheerleader" at Southeast Raleigh
High School, said Megan Watson, one of her best friends. "When we were
in the halls all you heard was 'Eurrrrrikkkkaa!'" Watson said.

Watson, a 16-year-old junior at Southeast Raleigh, said her friend
started experimenting with cocaine in January 2005 after she was
injured while cheerleading.

"That was the first time," Watson said. "She made me promise not to
tell anyone because that's just not something you want people to know."

In April 2005, Watson said Erica Hicks bought an "8-ball" -- an eighth
of an ounce of cocaine -- from a drug dealer. She had purchased from
the dealer before and got into an argument with him because he refused
to give her more coke on credit.

"After that she didn't speak to him for a long time," Watson said.
"That's when I knew it was getting bad."

Erica Hicks was apparently using ecstasy by July 2005. Another friend,
Venetia Rochelle, 18, told the court last week that she used cocaine
with Erica that month but also made a pact with her to stop.

"I asked her to promise not to touch ecstasy or any hard-core drugs,"
said Rochelle, who said she last saw Erica high on drugs a week before
she died.

"She was kind of nervous. Jumpy," Rochelle said. "She was not the
peppy Erica I knew."

Kimberly Hicks' former husband and her daughter's friends said she has
been a good mother. "She has been slandered enough," Ed Hicks said.

Now, Kimberly Hicks slides Kenny Chesney's song "Who You'd Be Today"
into her sport utility vehicle's CD player and thinks about her daughter.

"Sunny days seem to hurt the most/ I wear the pain like a heavy
coat

"The only thing that gives me hope/ Is I know, I'll see you again
someday."

"I listen to it every day," she said.