CHARLOTTE, N.C. — An 18-year-old Charlotte high school student was murdered -- found with very little clothing in the dead of winter. Now more than two and a half years later, police admit they’re stumped.
Detectives believe Shania Hammonds was suffocated, but they can’t figure out who would have done this or why.
They’re hoping you might be able to help.
"She was planning to live her life; she wasn’t ready to die," her mom told reporters soon after her daughter was found dead.
Hammonds was just 18-years-old, a senior at Mallard Creek High School.
She had been texting with her best friend about, of all things, puppies.
"She’d been hanging out with her friend all night, a friend's dog had puppies, texting back and forth, what they were going to name them," said Detective Miranda James.
But in the morning, the teen stopped responding to texts and her friends got worried.
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"Her friend went over to the house where she was staying to try to find her and couldn’t, realized her phone was in bedroom so they went outside and found her lying back behind the house."
It was February, freezing cold, and Hammonds was lying in the yard with just shorts and a t-shirt -- no shoes on her feet.
"I think she was moved to where she was finally found."
The teen had been staying with a friend's grandmother at a house on Willow Gate Lane, and police believe someone came over unexpectedly sometime during the night.
"The fact that she left her phone makes me think something happened she wasn’t expecting to happen. She wasn’t expecting to go very far from the house."
The medical examiner ruled there was no obvious cause of death, but detectives believe she was suffocated.
"She did have an injury above her eye, so there were signs of a struggle."
Beyond that, there are few clues. Only a plea from her mother.
"If there’s anybody out there that knows what happened to my daughter, please say something."
Police are frustrated, too.
"It just gives me more and more questions what could have happened that night that lead to that moment."
If you have any information that could lead to an arrest in the Shania Hammonds case, you could get a reward. Call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600. Your tip can be anonymous.