Lillian White visits the graves where her daughter and unborn granddaughter were buried last year. Shanta D. White was shot inside her car, and her mother suspects it was a setup. MICHAEL HOLAHAN/STAFF

Instead, most things in his home stay the way the unborn baby's mother left them - frozen in time, still waiting for her to come home.

Today marks a grim anniversary. One year ago on a moonless spring night, a killer fled into the darkness, and Shanta D. White spent her last moments trying to tell someone what happened.

Ms. White, 22 years old and eight months pregnant with her first child, clutched her cell phone and dialed 911 from the driver's seat of her car at 10:07 p.m.

Terrified and in pain, she spoke in shrieks and sobs: ''I just got shot. I just got shot ... I can't breathe.''

''Who shot you?'' the dispatcher asked.

She screamed and then spoke her last words: ''I don't know what to do.''

Inside the brick ranch-style house on Raleigh Drive, Mr. White lay in bed watching television. The crack of a gunshot brought him to the window. Looking out, he saw Ms. White slouched in the green Mercury Tracer with the door open.

He ran outside and crossed the lawn to the curb. Under the glow of a street light, he saw blood from her stomach soaking her brown, pleated dress. He heard the drone of a car engine fade away, he said.

As she gurgled and struggled to breathe, Mr. White spoke his last words to his only granddaughter:

''Tell me something. Give me a name. Who did this to you? Who did this to you?''

''But she couldn't say nothing,'' Mr. White said recently.

The White family still doesn't have the answer to that question. The killings of Ms. White and her baby girl remain a mystery.

Police don't know much more about the crime than they did a year ago.

Not much has changed inside the house, either. For Mr. White, 66, it's still too quiet.

He keeps the door closed on Ms. White's bedroom and the Tracer under a tarp in the back yard.

Bottles of prenatal vitamins gather dust on her dresser. So does a roll of ultrasound photos - some with clear images of the baby's face - lying on Ms. White's television set, near a playpen filled with toys and an unassembled swing set. Outside, her Wal-Mart badge still hangs from the Tracer's rear-view mirror.

Freddie White displays a photo of his granddaughter Shanta at his daughter's home in Forest Acres. Ms. White and her unborn baby were killed a year ago, and the case is unsolved. ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/STAFF

Mr. White scrapped retirement and does odd jobs now, trying to keep his mind busy. Sometimes, he says, he stares at a prom photo of Ms. White and cries. He keeps it on his television set behind a statue of an angel holding a baby.

Someday he might clean out the bedroom and the car, but he can't say when.

''It's just too hard on me,'' Mr. White said. ''I just want things to stay like they are.''

Standstill

Something else hasn't changed about the White family since the spring of 2000 - their suspicions. They still think someone she knew killed her.

''I believe it was a setup,'' said her mother, Lillian White.

Shanta White had reason to be nervous about her future as a unmarried mother, but she had few, if any, enemies.

Investigator Calvin Chew, the lead investigator in the case, spent three months last year working exclusively to find the killer. He couldn't find anyone in Ms. White's background having problems with her, he said. No one saw the killer fleeing.

''It was either one of two things. It was someone she knew, someone she thought she knew or someone she was familiar with,'' he said. ''Or it was a road rage-type thing. Somebody follows her home, then shoots her.''

Investigator Chew keeps the case files in three thick binders on his desk. Most of the pages are motor vehicle records, gathered to track down one of the few clues he had.

Ms. White had a habit of talking on her cell phone when she drove alone, often during the entire ride.

The evening before she died, she had gone to the home of her baby's father, Leon Bennett, 23, on Randall Road. They watched wrestling, and Ms. White left about 10 p.m., according to the father's family.

Cell phone records verified she called the number of her baby's aunt, Tanika Bennett, about five minutes before the shooting, Investigator Chew said.

Ms. Bennett said they chatted as Ms. White pulled into Forest Acres subdivision, and Ms. White told her a ''white man in a white car'' was following her, and kept ''getting closer and closer.''

Then Ms. White said, ''Oh my God, I've been shot,'' and the phone went dead, Ms. Bennett said.

Investigator Chew said the department pulled records of every car stopped in the county that day and interviewed more drivers than he can count. The effort yielded nothing.

Lillian White displays a drawing of her daughter Shanta D. White and unborn granddaughter, who were fatally shot a year ago today. Authorities are still soliciting any information that could help solve the case. ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/STAFF

Last winter, he helped persuade Gov. Roy Barnes' office to post an $8,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. The sheriff's office added $2,000.

The reward stands. To date, no new leads have come from it, Investigator Chew said. A useful tip might be the only thing that could bring the case to an end.

About once a week, he calls Mr. White or Lillian White to check on them.

''Just the thought that someone would do this to an eight-months pregnant girl, just the thought of that alone drives you to do what you can until a suspect is found,'' Investigator Chew said.

Breakdown

Mr. Bennett and his family didn't attend Ms. White and her baby's funeral. Tensions ran high between the two families after the killing, and still do.

In an interview with The Augusta Chronicle last year, Mr. Bennett said he loved Ms. White and his daughter, despite what her family said. He said they had agreed not to get married and planned to take care of the baby together.

Mr. Bennett did not return repeated messages left at his house seeking comment for this article. His mother, Barbara Stewart, said the killings and the subsequent accusations have traumatized him.

She said she loved Ms. White like a daughter and still has a Mother's Day card from her with a handwritten note: ''No matter what I'm going to always think of you as my mother.''

Mr. Bennett said he took Ms. White to a doctor's appointment the day before the shooting and got into a wreck on the way home. An Augusta Disposal and Recycling truck made an improper right turn on Stovall Street and struck his white Chevrolet Caprice, according to a Richmond County Sheriff's Office accident report.

The wreck kept Ms. White out of work the next day and sent Mr. Bennett's car to a body shop.

After the deaths, police questioned Mr. Bennett for hours, then released him. A few days after the funeral, Ms. Stewart said, she took her son to the grave in Cedar Grove cemetery.

''He broke down. He just laid down where she was buried,'' she said.

'Quit worrying'

For decades, Mr. White worked for Sen. Eugene Holley, once one of the most powerful men in the state. He took care of the children, cooked, chauffeured, cleaned houses, cut grass and washed cars, among other things.

The Holleys considered him one of the family. Mr. White rented a home on Allen Street - located in a neighborhood near the Augusta Country Club - until Mr. Holley gave it to him, he said. The last time he saw the former senator was at Ms. White's funeral.

Lillian White met Ms. White's father, Edwin Bennett - no relation to Leon - in that neighborhood. They didn't marry, and he left to pursue a military career. Mr. White became a surrogate father to the girl, rearing her in the five-bedroom, one-bathroom house where his wife, two daughters and four sons also lived.

The country club bought the house about three years ago, and Mr. White moved to Forest Acres.

Lillian White, who still lives in the neighborhood on Lawton Street, said she fretted when her daughter announced her pregnancy, knowing she would also become a single mother.

Ms. White pulled out of her mother's driveway for the last time the evening she died. Lillian White had told her to rest before heading off to a bridal shower thrown for a friend and co-worker, the future Helen Walker.

''Mom, quit worrying about me,'' she answered.

About an hour after leaving the shower at Logan's Roadhouse, her 911 call came in to Richmond County dispatch.

Mr. White said his granddaughter always parked in front of the house because, in her condition, she didn't like having to unlock the gate to park in the back yard. Police found her there with the door open and her left leg out of the car.

The bullet had pierced her upper abdomen and torn through the baby's right leg and chest, Investigator Chew said.

Mr. Bennett said Ms. White tried to call him but he was outside at the time, the investigator said. Cell phone records showed only the call to 911.

She and the baby probably died at the scene, Investigator Chew said.

Waiting and waiting

Ms. White's family buried her and the baby, Shigah Valencia, in the same coffin, the mother in a pink dress, the baby in a white gown. They had Ms. White's hair done up in braids. The baby lay snuggled against her mother's left side.

In the past year, the White family has watched other unsolved homicide investigations come to a close. The lingering case of David Holt even saw some closure earlier this year in a string of arrests and indictments.

Watching the cases close has been difficult for Mr. White.

''It seems like this would be the easiest one,'' he said.

In the wake of Ms. White's killing, some people have questioned why Wal-Mart didn't put up a reward, as the company did in the case of Mr. Holt, a Sam's Club manager.

The reason, according to company spokeswoman Sharon Weber, was that Mr. Holt's death was job related. His killers abducted him as he left work, police said.

Ms. White's co-workers have held bake sales to raise money for her family. They place donation jars at registers. They call and visit Mr. White and Lillian White regularly. They wear black-and-pink ribbons at work in her memory.

''We'll wear them until the killer is found,'' said Karrie Barnes, Ms. White's supervisor, during a visit to the grave last month.

Along with Investigator Chew, she and other co-workers know what it will take, and they're confident it will happen.

''Sooner or later, somebody's going to talk,'' Mrs. Walker said.

Until they do, a door in Mr. White's house remains shut, and dust thickens in an empty bedroom.

Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225 or johnny.edwards@augustachronicle.com.