THE HILLREST CIRCLE SHOOTING THAT STILL HAUNTS UNC

 Just before dawn on March 5th, 2008, a woman living on Hillrest Circle in Chapel Hill woke up to something that would shake her town forever. First, she heard a single gunshot, then a scream. After that, three more shots fired fast, one after another. When police got there around 5:00 a.m.

, they found a young woman's body in the street. She was lying on her left side, right arm twisted behind her head. Five gunshots had ended her life. Her name was Eve Carson. She was 22, not just any student. She was a Morehead Kane scholar, premed, and the student body president at UNC. You can't really understand what happened that morning without knowing who Eve was.

 Not just what she did, but the kind of person she was. With Eve, those two things were pretty much the same. Eve Marie Carson was born on November 19th, 1985 in Athens, Georgia. Her parents, Bob Carson and Terresa Bethki, raised someone who just seemed to draw people in. She had this energy that made everyone around her want to do better.

 At Clark Central High, Eve stood out. She wasn't just another kid getting good grades. She was validictorian, student body president on the academic team, and vice president of the National Honor Society. But people who knew her always talked about her heart first. They'd mention how she volunteered at the Athens area detention home helping abused and runaway teens or how she spent summers in a stem cell research lab at UG or working as a page in Congress.

 

Her high school principal Maxine Eim once said, "Eve was just the most wonderful young woman you would ever want to know. She was brilliant. She was absolutely beautiful. Everything she did was aimed at helping other people. When Eve started college at UNC Chapel Hill in 2004, she'd already won the Morehead Kain Scholarship.

 No small feat, she picked political science and biology as her majors, premed. Naturally, Eve could have just coasted with her brains, her scholarship, her spark. Nobody would have blamed her for focusing on grades and med school applications. That would have been plenty for most people. But Eve wasn't most people.

 She coached with girls on the run, helping young girls build confidence through running. She studied abroad in Cuba. She spent her summers volunteering in Ecuador, Egypt, and Ghana thanks to the Morehead Summer Enrichment Program. In February 2007, UNCC students elected her student body president in a huge turnout. Seth Dear, a former UNC president himself, remembered her as happy, vivacious, intelligent, and engaged.

 UNC's chancellor, James Moser, said she was a joyful person. She loved this place. She loved being here. Eve had already accepted an offer from McKenzie and Company, one of the most prestigious consulting firms you can imagine. Her term as student body president was wrapping up in April 2008. Graduation was right around the corner.

 She was going to get her dual degree political science and biology with her family there to see it. The night before everything changed. March 4th, Eve was at home studying. Her roommates went out to a party. She stayed in. Nothing unusual, just Eve being responsible as always. Her roommates last saw her alive at 1:30 a.m.

 What happened next took years to piece together. Surveillance footage, witness accounts, and finally confessions. Just before 5:00 a.m., the woman on Hillrest Circle called 911. Police rushed to the intersection of Hillrest Circle and Hillrest Road. Later that day, Eve's friends had to do the unthinkable, identify her body. The autopsy confirmed five gunshot wounds.

No sign of sexual assault. Police found Eve's Toyota Highlander about a mile away. Inside, they collected DNA evidence from the interior door handle. DNA that would eventually point to one of the killers. Eve Carson's murder hit Chapel Hill like a tidal wave. People were stunned. The next day, March 6th, thousands of UNC students packed into the pit, the heart of campus, for a memorial.

 The crowd was so big, Chancellor Moser stood before them at a loss for words. We've lost someone we loved, he said. We're all just stunned. It's a tragedy that hits even harder when you think about how many lives Eve Carson touched here. He went on, this shakes everything we believe about ourselves, about this being a peaceful, safe place for kids.

 That Thursday night, thousands gathered for a candlelight vigil. Chapel Hills mayor Kevin Foy called Eve a presence in the community whose absence leaves a permanent void. But in those early days, police had nothing. No suspects, no leads. Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian Curran stood in front of the reporters and said, "We're working non-stop to find any information we can about who did this.

" They even reached out to authorities in Alabama. Another young woman had been killed at Auburn, but after looking into it, they realized the cases weren't connected. The police said they believed Eve's death was random. For 5 days, the investigation went nowhere. Then on March 10th, a tip finally broke the silence. Lead investigator Celisa Lao got two names.

Lawrence Alvin Levette Jr. and Deario James Atwater. Turns out the two men drove in from Durham that night. They came with a plan to rob someone. Dear Atwater was 21. He'd already been convicted of felony breaking and entering and for having a gun as a felon. He was on probation. Lawrence Levette Jr. was just 17.

 Only two months earlier in January, he'd landed on probation for breaking and entering. Later, people would say they'd been friends since they were kids. That night, March 4th, Levette called another friend, Jason McNeel, asking for a ride to Chapel Hill. He told McNeel he and Rio Atwater were going to rob somebody. Around 3:00 a.m.

 on March 5th, they spotted Eve Carson getting into her Toyota Highlander. They went for her. Jason McNeel later told the court what Levette had described. Levette jumped in the driver's seat. Atwater climbed into the back, gunpressed to Eve's head. For 2 hours, Eve endured something you can't really imagine.

 They drove her from ATM to ATM. Surveillance cameras caught them. Grainy video later played in court. Eve sat in the back seat, head down, hands up, praying. Atwater, sat next to her, looking anxious. This was the same young woman who'd spent her life helping people. Now she was begging just to stay alive. Levette, behind the wheel, looked eerily calm. At 3:55 a.m.

at an ATM at University Mall, they forced Eve to take out $700. In Durham, they tried again, but got nothing. Seven tries, 700 bucks. According to McNeel, Eve tried to talk them down. She told them they didn't have to do this. She begged, "Take what you want. Just don't kill me.

" But they'd already made their choice. She'd seen their faces. They drove her to a wooded neighborhood about a mile from UNCC's campus. When Eve realized what was happening, she made one last request. She asked them to pray with her before he shot her. McNeel said in court, she was saying, "Let's pray." She wanted to pray with them.

 She said, "Pray with me." Prosecutors would argue that Levette shot Eve four times. Her cheek, her back, her arm, her hip, but she didn't die right away. She was still conscious, still talking. That's when Atwwater stepped up with a shotgun. The last shot went through her right hand and into her head.

 They left her body in the street and drove off in her SUV. Surveillance video turned out to be key. Cameras at a Chapel Hill convenience store caught someone using E's ATM card the day she was killed. Chief Curran believed it was Atwater. Bank cameras showed someone else, likely Lvette, trying to use the same card. On March 13th, police arrested both men.

 On March 31st, an Orange County grand jury indicted both Atwater and Levette on charges of firstdegree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, and lararseny. The evidence against them was substantial. the surveillance footage, the DNA, the witnesses who came forward, and eventually testimonies from people close to the defendants, including Jason McNeel, who would testify in exchange for a reduced sentence in an unrelated federal drug case.