Friends and family gathered for the funeral of 19-year-old Jessica Chambers of Mississippi while local police in the small town of Courtland struggled to solve the mystery of who doused her with a flammable liquid and burned her alive.
Police are trying to reconstruct the last few hours of her life on Dec. 6 before she was set afire and left to die beside a road. They have appealed to residents of the town some 70 miles north of Jackson to come forward if they have any information.
"There's just not a lot of street talk out there about who may or may not have done this," District Attorney John Champion said at a news conference. "We feel like somebody out there has heard something."
Investigators have spoken of a "strong possibility" that someone was with her in her car before the teen was soaked with an accelerant fluid and set on fire.
Among the hundreds who gathered at a funeral service for Chambers were many with memories of the friendly and outgoing teenager, a former cheerleader and softball player hoping to start college next year.
"She was real big-hearted and kind and liked to act crazy, but she never meant any harm," a friend, Phillip Hentz, said.
Investigators have talked to several people who spoke to Chambers on the day she died and have received a search warrant allowing them to examine her cell phone.
A surveillance camera at a rural gas station and convenience store photographed Chambers on Dec. 6.
Ali Fadhel, a worker at the store, said she pumped more gas than usual -- $14 instead of her more normal $5 -- and told him she was "going somewhere."
"If she knew she had a problem with somebody, she would have told me," he said.
Around 90 minutes later firefighters found her next to her car on the side of a road with burns over 98 percent of her body.
Still alive, she was able to say a few words to emergency personnel before dying in a hospital in Memphis.
Investigators have not confirmed the content of her dying words.
Jessica's father said his daughter had been in a battered women's shelter a few months before she was killed.
"She was getting on the right track," Ben Chambers said. "She had learned her lessons from being in bad relationships."
A reward for any information leading to her killer has reached $11,000.
