A few hours to our north, police have no idea who killed Eve Carson.
The apparently unrelated fatal shootings of a pair of bright, popular college students from North Georgia have left two idyllic Southern campuses, and two Georgia hometowns, gripped with shock and sorrow.
"The waves of grief keep rolling over us, " said Doris Granum of Athens, a Carson family friend and Eve's elementary school music teacher.
"I really take hope in the fact that there is no connection in Eve and the girl at Auburn, because I can't believe somebody out there would be that terrible to go around killing young women."
Burk, an Auburn freshman from east Cobb County, was shot Tuesday night and later died at a hospital. Her car was discovered on fire in a parking lot near a dormitory.
Carson, a 2004 graduate of Clarke Central High School in Athens who was the University of North Carolina's student body president, was found shot to death early Wednesday. Her car was later found abandoned.
Auburn police say they have "strong leads, " and have conducted interviews with unnamed "persons of interest, " but are releasing few details of their investigation.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's office announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to Burk's killer; the tip lines to call are 888-522-7847 and 334-501-7337.
In Chapel Hill, where students gathered for a vigil in Carson's memory Thursday night, police were calling her shooting death a "random crime" and had no suspects. The two departments have talked but say the crimes are likely not linked.
At both campuses, students who had been looking forward to spring break have come together to support each other, remember their friends --- and to feel safer.
"We're just making sure we're with someone else at all times, " said Auburn sophomore Caitlin Fischer, 19.
Parents like Carole Schumaker of Dothan, Ala., say they've been calling to check in.
"I'm just thankful that it wasn't my child, " said Schumaker, who has a 20-year-old daughter at Auburn.
The murder so rattled Auburn junior Katie Hanson, she and her roommates bought knives and pepper spray at a local sporting goods store.
"We all kind of had this feeling, 'We're young, we're active, '" said Hanson, 21, who is from the city of Auburn. "We felt invincible."
Lately, the art history student has checked to make sure doors and windows are locked, and sleeps with pepper spray by her bed.
A 2007 Walton High School graduate, the 18-year-old Burk lived in the Cambridge residence hall, a large brick building that is off campus and across the street from the campus library.
Cambridge resident Caitlin Simpson, 19, a freshman from Huntsville, Ala., met Burk earlier in the year while they were running on treadmills in the gym. After that encounter, Burk would always say hello when they crossed paths.
"She was a sweet girl, " Simpson said.
In Chapel Hill, text messages from the school about the fatal shooting went out on Wednesday. On Thursday, the day before spring break started, the victim was identified as Carson, UNC's gregarious student body president.
Once the news broke, the brick courtyard in the heart of campus, known as the Pit, immediately flooded with crying students. Many instructors cancelled classes. Carolina students --- many vowing to keep cell-phones on and friends close by when they walk through campus now --- flocked to a candlelight vigil in Carson's memory Thursday night. "After hearing about this, you just kind of lose that sense of safety, " said Evan Scott, a freshman from Charlotte.
Carson, 22, was a recipient of UNC's prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholarship. A pre-med and political science student, she had traveled to Cuba, Egypt, Ecuador and Ghana, and had served as her high school's student body president as well as her university's.
Back in Athens, family friends remembered a vivacious, determined and giving young woman.
"She was going to change the world, " said Granum, the music teacher. "In my 25 years of teaching, she was the No. 1 student I ever had. She was as close to a perfect human being as you would want to know. Gorgeous, talented, smart, kind, interested in everything, talented at everything and yet very real and very humble and just a lovely, lovely person to know."
Former Athens Mayor Gwen O'Looney remembered Carson as the high school valedictorian who so lacked materialism that she went on to campaign for UNC's student body presidency wearing a borrowed suit.
"She knew that she had great privileges in life and riches, and her only goal was to give back, " O'Looney said. "She was going to be a great contributor. The world has lost this kind of valuable, valuable part of the future."
A senior set to graduate this spring, Carson was going work for McKenzie Consulting, O'Looney said.
Thursday afternoon in the Carson's Athens neighborhood, mothers awaited school buses, awaiting their children's return and wondering how they would tell their children that their former babysitter had died.
"They're all trying to figure out how to explain to them that this wonderful light is gone, " O'Looney said.
---Reported by staff writers Tim Eberly, Chip Towers, Mike Morris, Karen Rosen and Ken Sugiura. Julie Turkewitz also contributed to this article.
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