Eve Carson Murder Update

At first the local police just said that Carson had been shot several times, and once in the head. This was consistent with a fusillade of shots, one of which hit her in the head. Today they are saying that the shot in question was to the right temple. This indicates something more than ordinary gun violence--it indicates that someone wanted to guarantee that she was dead. She was shot in the right temple, which indicates that she was not sitting in the passenger seat when she was shot.

As a friend and correspondent of mine, the revered J. Carthensis, has pointed out to me, this is not the M.O. of ordinary criminals or carjackers. Add to this that her new SUV was found about four blocks away on the side of a different quiet street (about 200 feet from where I used to live back in the day, incidentally), and also very close to campus, and a picture starts to emerge, though there are reasons to not say anything much more about this until the police have been given an opportunity to do their thing.

It feels very somber in Chapel Hill today. Rainy and dark, and the day before Spring break starts, so campus and Franklin Street feel abandoned. There's lots about the murder, and about Ms. Carson on WCHL. It's funny. I of course know very well that people, including young people, get killed all the time. And that many, many are being killed and maimed in Iraq. And I feel the weight of that. But this sort of thing just hits a community like this hard. It brings the tragedy of such things right up close, highlighting the terrible loss.