Front Doors
On March 3rd, 2006, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar plowed through The Pit, a sunken, brick area on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s campus. Surrounded by two libraries, the bookstore, a dining hall, and the student union, hundreds of students were gathered in the area––including my sister. Unsuspicious of anything, because to them, it was simply another Friday. Who would suspect a Jeep Grand Cherokee to speed through with the intention of killing them?
My sister, Melissa, waited in line for breakfast after her class let out early. Unsuspecting of anything, she looked out the window and saw the horror unfold.
Nine students were struck. Six went to the hospital. The driver turned himself in and told police they would find a letter in his apartment, detailing his intentions. Later that afternoon, the police found his UNC diploma and his Carolina blue graduation gown in his closet––worn just three months prior.
Melissa got her bagel and went home. Unharmed. Safe.
But what if she had been three people ahead in line and got her food early? Then she walked through The Pit at exactly the wrong time? What if the driver had gotten stuck at a light on the way? What if Melissa’s class didn’t get out early? Then it was Melissa who lay in the back of an ambulance?
Two years and two days later, they found one of Melissa’s classmates dead in the woods of a Chapel Hill neighborhood a mile off campus.
Fear washed over Chapel Hill on March 5th, 2008. A news channel released a report of a shooting in the Hillcrest neighborhood. The victim was said to be a blonde female, aged eighteen to twenty-five, 5’6”, 120 pounds, wearing gray sweatpants and a blue short-sleeved shirt––everyone began to believe she must have been a college student.
Hours later, police found the victim’s car about a mile away from her body: a 2005 blue Toyota Highlander with a Georgia license plate.
Around noon on March 6th, police released the news that they identified the body to be Eve Marie Carson––the current student body president of the university. Eve’s roommate, Anna Lassiter confirmed it was her based on the golden locket she wore every day.
The world kept turning, but Chapel Hill froze in time. Students attended class the rest of the day as they were told there was no threat to the community––physically. The community’s heart broke at the news.
Campus lay silent. Everyone stood around, unsure of what to do next. Fewer cars drove by. An eeriness hung over the bubble of the university. Strangers comforted each other. Everyone looked at each other and thought, it could have been anyone.
It could have been Melissa in the body bag. It could have been Melissa’s photograph plastered across newspapers. It could have been my sister.
Why her?
During the Spring semester of 2008, Melissa sat across the room from her in class while I sat in my third-grade class just a four-minute drive away––oblivious to anything happening down the road, missing my sister, wondering when her next visit would be.
***
For eighteen years, the only neighborhood I knew was Sunset Creek in Chapel Hill. It sounds comforting. Comforting means home. Home means safe––right?
My family’s house was deep enough in the neighborhood to feel tucked away––almost hidden in the back of a cul-de-sac. It sat nestled against the tree line of a small forest, on top of a hill. The other kids my age explored nearly every day. When it snowed, we hiked to the back of woods to sled down the “giant” hill. We memorized the land. If I went back today, I could still maneuver my way perfectly through our trails with my eyes closed.
So, I knew, the forest wasn’t as extensive as it seemed to be at first glance. If you ran through the trails, it would only take around five minutes to reach one of the busiest roads around.
Sometime around middle school, my parents started leaving me at home alone. I loved it—until the sun set. Every Disney movie taught me the monsters come out in the darkness. The evil witch gives Snow White the poison apple. Sleeping Beauty pricks herself on the spinning wheel. Ursula grows and tries to kill Ariel and Prince Eric.
Every creak in the floors meant someone broke in. I jumped every time the AC kicked on or the ice maker restarted.
When I got my license, my parents deemed me old enough to stay by myself overnight, and the fear only worsened. I held my dog in bed and prayed no monsters could find our home.
I felt vulnerable––an easy target. (My dog offered no protection. He weighed out to twenty-five pounds and was all bark and no bite.) The forest provided the culprit with an escape route. Get in, do the job, and leave through the trees. No one would see.
So, I checked the front door’s locks repeatedly throughout the day and again at night. I closed all the curtains but kept a lamp on in the window.
My parents came home to their alive daughter every morning.
***
My junior year of college, in 2022, I moved into a house in Wilmington, North Carolina of six girls. Our driveway leads to the backyard where we park in the grass. It’s only a thirty second walk from the car to the backdoor. The girls who lived in the house before us lost the keys to the backdoor, so for a long time, we just left it unlocked during the day. Walking around to the front of the house became annoying, especially in the dark.
Only a month into our lease, someone’s car alarm woke me up in the middle of the night. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the backyard or down the street. It didn’t sound like my car though. Assuming everything was fine––assuming everything is always fine––I rolled over and went back to sleep.
In the morning, my roommate walked outside to find her back window shattered, but nothing stolen from inside. The alarm must have spooked him. Still, afraid, we installed a camera above our backdoor to watch over our cars, and a motion-sensor light so we didn’t have to walk in the dark anymore.
I hit the lock three times every time I leave my blue Toyota. The beeping provides comfort. I find satisfaction in hearing the click of the doors locking.
I hit the lock button as soon as I get in the driver’s seat. I check the backseat, and immediately drive away.
I don’t linger when I park. I don’t allow any time for anyone to approach my car. I don’t give anyone the chance to hide and jump out as soon as I step outside.
***
I was four years old when Melissa graduated high school and moved into the dorms at UNC-Chapel Hill. Four-years-old was too young to understand where she went. Four-years-old was too young to grasp the concept of time. She left, and she came back every now and then, but there was no way for me to know how many hours or days passed in between each time I saw her. Twelve minutes in the car would bring her back to me, but twelve minutes felt like a lifetime to a toddler.
I wrapped my arms around Melissa’s ankles every time I saw her bags packed, begging her not to go.
***
Justin Singer stopped by his house on 202 Friendly Lane at about 1:30 in the morning before leaving again, and unknowingly, seeing his roommate, Eve Carson, alive for the last time. Eve sat on the couch, working on some papers for school, as she usually studied late at night because of her busy schedule. When Singer left the house, he asked Eve if she wanted the door open or closed. The house had no air conditioning, and it became stuffy inside quickly.
“Open,” she said.
The sheer screen door separated Eve from the outside world––nothing else.
Singer returned home at 4:30 the morning of March 5th. The house stayed exactly how he left it––except Eve wasn’t home and her car was gone. The front door still sat open with the screen door shut, which was abnormal for the roommates on Friendly Lane. An uneasiness overwhelmed Singer, so he pulled out his keys as a makeshift weapon, just in case someone else hid in the house, ready to attack.
No one was home.
Just a few hours later, the police called him to help identify Eve’s body.
***
202 Friendly Lane’s front door faced Rosemary Street which ran parallel to East Franklin Street––the main road through downtown Chapel Hill, right next to campus. Next to Friendly Lane were Cottage and Spring Lane.
The street names do not represent the evil that would occur in March 2008. Rosemary supposedly symbolizes love. Spring is a time for new beginnings––Eve was about to graduate college and move to Atlanta to work as a management consultant. The connotation of a cottage is peaceful. Yet the things that happened that night were hateful and hostile and ended the life of a young woman.
My house in Wilmington is complete with an expansive front porch with a wooden swing and a pink front door. We want our house to feel inviting; we want to host. We want our friends to feel comfortable as soon as they pull into our driveway.
Come in!
But once the sun sets and darkness takes over, the hospitality dissipates. I’ve taken charge of making sure every door is locked, and all the curtains are drawn shut. I wave at the camera in our backyard to make sure the motion-sensor light works.
Keep out.
If I could paint the front door black every night, I would.
202 Friendly Lane was painted yellow. The front door was left wide open. During one of Eve’s murderer’s trials, one of the roommates, Anna Lassiter, stated, “We were pretty trusting.”
They had no reason to not trust the community. Chapel Hill wasn’t considered a dangerous place full of dangerous people. It was a college-town––mainly college students lived around them. There’s a special sense of comradery on a street of college houses. They’re all there for the same reason. They’re all stressed. They’re all broke. They’re all minding their own business.
“Pretty trusting”––just like my other five roommates, but it’s not in my nature to trust anyone walking down our street.
***
Early on the morning of March 5th, 2008, Laurence Alvin Lovette Junior called his friend, Jayson McNeil to drive him to Chapel Hill with the intention of robbing someone. When McNeil refused, Lovette drove his mother’s car to meet up with another of his friends, Demario James Atwater. From there, they searched for a victim down East Rosemary Street.
Around 3:30 in the morning, UNC student, Caroline Harper, sat in the parking lot of her sorority house on the corner of Rosemary and Friendly Lane. Just fifteen feet from her car, she noticed two men staring at her. Frightened, she drove away, but in her rearview mirror, she noticed the two men walking toward Friendly Lane.
Seven minutes later, Eve Carson used her computer for the last time.
The open door was the Achilles’ heel. Atwater and Lovette saw it and used it. They entered the house with ease, forced Eve into her Toyota Highlander, and Lovette climbed into the front seat with Atwater and their captive in the backseat. Eve looked into Atwater’s eyes as he held a gun against her head and prayed.
Lovette drove five minutes to University Mall where they withdrew seven hundred dollars from her bank account at an ATM. After five more unsuccessful attempts to withdraw money at other locations, they realized she had seen their faces. She became a threat as soon as she looked them in the eye and a danger to them if they let her go––alive. In videos from the ATM, Eve sat in the backseat praying. She pressed her hands together and shut her eyes. Praying for strength? Safety? Peace?
Eve never stopped begging for her life. She told them they could take whatever they wanted. She told them they didn’t have to do what they were doing. She told them they didn’t have to kill her.
They drove her to a densely wooded neighborhood about a mile off the university’s campus.
“Let’s pray,” Eve asked her captors in her final moments. “Pray with me.”
Lovette shot her first. When they saw she was still alive and moving, Atwater shot her again. She held up her hand to shield herself, but the bullet went through and ended her life. In total, they shot her five times across her body.
The forensic psychologist and criminal profiler stated that the manner in which they killed her showed “a complete lack of regard for another person.”
In his closing argument during the trial, attorney James Rainsford stated, “What the defendant did to Eve Carson was greedy, miserable, and cruel. It was useless, and that’s what murder is.”
Useless––yes, Eve saw their faces, but so did video cameras. Either way, they were going to be caught.
They somehow went home, seemingly unphased, and told Jayson McNeil. McNeil told the police everything.
Around 5 in the morning, a woman living in the Hillcrest neighborhood called the police to report gunshots and screaming she heard in the middle of the night.
***
Atwater pled guilty on April 19th, 2010, to all federal and state charges. On September 23rd, 2010, the judge sentenced him to life in prison plus thirty years. Atwater turned to Eve’s parents and said, “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. No matter what the court did today, it would be far from anything I should receive.”
They did not reply.
Demario Atwater was sent to serve his life sentence at the United States Penitentiary Atwater in California. USP Atwater––as if the high-security prison was built for a man of such vile nature.
Lovette pleaded not guilty to all charges on December 6th, 2011. Just two weeks later, the jury found him guilty. The judge said, “The life that Ms. Carson led was too short, but I know that she continues to be an inspiration, not only for her family, but for thousands in this community and across this country.”
“You know, people make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. I’m not the monster that y’all made me out to be,” Lovette claimed, a year and a half later.
***
Melissa went on to finish class without Eve sitting across the room. That May, for the first time in university history, they posthumously awarded her dual-major degree to her family.
Her killers wanted to take from her. But instead, they took her away from her friends, family, and an entire community.
A year later, I watched my sister and her boyfriend walk across the stage and accept her own degree.
Now, I’m twenty-one; Melissa is thirty-five.
It’ll be my turn to graduate from UNC Wilmington in just a few months. I’ll put on my navy and teal graduation regalia and receive my diploma. And it’ll probably live in my closet for some time.
But none of it feels fair. Is it luck that it is a graduation party instead of a funeral? Is it luck that I get to walk across the stage instead of lie in a casket? I can’t help but think what might happen if we forgot to lock our door one night, and someone saw that as an invitation to come inside. I could have ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time in the middle of campus, and a man drives his car down the sidewalk.
It almost was Melissa. It could have almost been me.
Tonight, I will hug Melissa a little tighter before she drives home. I will pray a little harder that they make it home safe.
Tonight, I will check the locks twice. I will check if the camera in the backyard is working. I will check if the blinds are shut. I will check if the lamp in the window is on.
And maybe, tomorrow, I will paint the front door black.
