LaSharon Thomas has spent the last three years waiting on a phone call.
It's one that she has faith one day will come: It is the call that tells her that one of her son's murderers has been found and arrested.
Johnte Shaheed Holliday was shot and killed Feb. 6, 2014, during a home invasion at his uncle's home in Summerton.
Holliday was killed just after midnight, when he let two men he believed to be his uncle’s acquaintances into the home. The two demanded money and shots were fired.
One arrest was made Feb. 11, with Anthony Thomas James, 25, charged with murder. James was released on bond later that year.
“But there’s one man still out there, living in the community while my son is dead,” said Thomas on Tuesday, the two-year anniversary of the last time she saw her son alive. She said Holladay came to Summerton to look for work in the area.
“I don’t understand how the little town I grew up in could keep such a dark secret,” Thomas said. “I know that someone knows who killed my son. I know they know. I just want them to think about, well, what if it was them or their son?”
Holliday was just 18 when he was shot and killed three years ago.
"He had the best years of his life ahead of him," Thomas said. "Three years later, it has gotten easier to deal with the fact that he's gone. But that pain is still there. I will always be the mother who lost a child. That pain never goes away."
The pain has been ever preset for her other children as well.
"My daughter just got her permit, and she said to me that her friends all have their older siblings to help them learn how to drive," Thomas said. "She doesn't have that."
Her youngest son has been bullied at school, she said.
"He said he should have his older brother to help, and he doesn't have that," she said. "It does affect both of them."
Former Sheriff Randy Garrett said in 2016 that Holliday's second killer is not a secret, at least to one other person.
“You think people wouldn’t keep such a secret, but they do,” he said. “Usually the No. 1 reason is they’re afraid to come forward. They fear retaliation. And that’s understandable. They live in those neighborhoods; we don’t.”
Sheriff Tim Baxley, who took office in early January, has continued a policy of allowing anonymous tips. Thomas said she is supposed to meet with Baxley later this week to discuss her son's case.
"No mother should have to bury their child," she said. "I have to make sure I'm there for my other two kids. I have to be there for his son."
Johnte Holliday Jr. was born June 1, 2014, nearly four months after his father’s death.
“I will have to be there when he starts asking where his daddy is,” Thomas said. “He will never get to know his father, and my son will never get to know his baby.”
Thomas said she spends each day wondering, “why?”
“I think about it every day,” she said. “I go to bed at night knowing I don’t have a son, and when I wake up in the morning, I realize it all over again.”
She said she just wants those in the community who know something to step forward and to put themselves in her shoes.
“It could’ve been them who lost a son,” she said. “I just don’t know how they can live with such a dark secret. If you can hold that kind of secret, you may as well have pulled that trigger and murdered my son yourself.”
If anyone has any information, they are urged to contact the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office at (803) 434-4414 or Crimestoppers at 1 (888) CRIME-SC.
