Death of a Dream Girl.

Jody-Gaye Bailey had everything going for her--stellar grades, a loving boyfriend, a bright future. Then she was gunned down at a stoplight by a drunken racist. Cosmo tells the shocking story.

Jody-Gaye Bailey and Christian Martin, both 20, had been so busy with school and their part-time jobs that Valentine's Day came and went before they had a chance to celebrate. Jody and Chris were students at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and had been dating for two years. On February 23, 1999, the first night they both had off, they spent the evening studying together. Around midnight, they decided to go out for a drive.

"Jody had just tried cappuccino for the first time a few weeks before, and she really liked it," recalls Chris. "We thought there might be a coffee shop open where we could get a cup." No such luck. They settled for a gas station with a cappuccino machine. The coffee was a disappointment, but the conversation was not.

"We spent the next few hours driving around and talking," says Chris. "We talked about the past, the present, and the future--about having children and stuff like that." Jody and Chris refused to believe that anything stood in the way of their future, including the fact that he was white and she was black.

By the next week, everything had changed. In a daze, Chris found himself standing at the podium of the Sunny Isles Christian Church staring at a white casket that held his girlfriend. Flanked by his brother and a friend, he struggled to compose himself in front of hundreds of people in the congregation. "I try to find the words to do her justice," Christian said through his tears. "But they leave me as soon as they come."

The night of their post-Valentine's Day drive, Chris and Jody were on Oakland Park Boulevard, just minutes from home, when at about 3:30 A.M. they noticed a gray car in the next lane. The driver, a white man with a goatee and shaved head, fixed them with a piercing gaze and began to keep pace with them. After a few stoplights, the driver started shouting unintelligibly. "Don't look at him," Chris told Jody, hoping to avoid a confrontation.

At the next intersection, the car pulled up on the passenger side. First, Chris saw the tattooed arm, then the gun. In the same instant, he heard gunfire and glass shattering, and then the car was gone. The gunman had fired seven bullets, one of which struck Jody in the head. "Please don't let this be," Chris prayed as he clutched Jody's blood-soaked body. In the aftermath, Chris wondered why anyone would commit such a random act of violence. He later found out it wasn't random after all.