Eve Carson's death stuns campus

The body of Eve Carson, UNC-CH's student body president, was found Wednesday

CHAPEL HILL -- Police are following leads in the slaying of Eve Carson, the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president, but say they have no suspects or motives they are willing to discuss.

"It feels like a fairly random crime," Police Chief Brian Curran said.

Carson's 2005 Toyota Highlander was found Thursday less than a mile from where she was discovered shot to death early Wednesday, just outside Chapel Hill's downtown.

Curran could not say how long the sport utility vehicle had been there but said police think that in the hours before Carson, 22, died, the vehicle was driven from the cottage she shared with four roommates.

"I can't tell you why I think that, but I'm confident it was," Curran said. "We think that whoever perpetrated the crime was at some point in that car."

A woman reported the car to police about 2 p.m. after seeing it parked on a dead-end stub of North Street, around the corner from Carson's house at 202 Friendly Lane.

"I wasn't even paying attention," said Erin Rice, who was listening to the news on the radio. "And I said, 'Oh, there's a blue Highlander' ... and my heart just starts pounding."

The day before, a report of gunshots had led police to the Hillcrest neighborhood, a collection of architectural gems on a rolling, wooded hilltop northeast of the UNC-CH campus. Police found Carson with gunshot wounds, including one to the head, about 5:15 a.m.

Carson was wearing a dark blue T-shirt, gray sweat pants and white athletic shoes but carried nothing that might have helped police identify her. Carson's roommates identified her body Thursday morning. A man at the house later Thursday declined to comment.

They left; she stayed

Police don't know why she would have been out so early Wednesday. Her roommates told police that they'd gone out at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday and that she had stayed home alone to study.

"She was an extraordinarily busy woman, and it wasn't unusual for her to go to the office in the middle of the night," Curran said.

This is the second homicide in Chapel Hill this year.

"We have very few homicides in Chapel Hill," said Curran, who has worked for the department since the late 1980s. "I can't recall any when we didn't know who the person was pretty much from the get-go."

The police chief said the last time a UNC student was slain in Chapel Hill was in 1995, when Wendell Williamson, a law student who had threatened other students and caused disturbances on campus, opened fire on several people on Henderson Street. He shot lacrosse player Kevin Reichardt, 20, knocking him from his bicycle, then fired again, killing Reichardt as he tried to crawl away.

Curran said investigators were in contact with police in Auburn, Ala., where a university freshman, hailing from Georgia as Carson did, was killed this week. "It appears to be unlikely that they're connected," he said.

Like Curran, District Attorney James Woodall attended an assembly that drew thousands of students to Polk Place on campus Thursday. He said random crimes are often hard to solve, but he thinks the Chapel Hill Police Department can solve this one.

"It takes time and it takes legwork to solve random crimes," Woodall said.

(Staff writer Samuel Spies contributed to this report.)