Shawna Denise Hawk was 20 and living with her mother, Dee Sumpter, in Charlotte, North Carolina, while studying to be a paralegal and working at Taco Bell. On February 19, 1993, Shawna failed to pick up her godson from daycare and was missing from home; her coat and purse were left behind. When her boyfriend checked the apartment he found her submerged in the bathtub. She was taken to hospital and pronounced dead. An autopsy showed a head injury and that ligature strangulation was the ultimate cause of death.

Investigators later linked Shawna’s killing to a string of murders of young Black women in the Charlotte area. In March 1994 a man arrested for another slaying confessed to multiple murders, including admitting he raped and strangled Shawna in her home, took fifty dollars from her purse, and attended her funeral. Shawna’s death left her family devastated; her mother went on to found Mothers of Murdered Offspring. Did anyone in the community know Shawna well enough to share memories or details that might add to the record?