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Time doesn't heal all wounds.

Eventually, it can numb the pain, but the pain never really goes away.

Especially for Becky McCuddin, whose daughter, Lisa McCuddin, was fatally shot five years ago today.

In fact, her daughter's ashes are in a china cabinet in her dining room.

The shooter is still on the lam.

"The grief never goes away," she said. "People always say that time heals all wounds. That's a lie. It doesn't heal all wounds. What time does is help you control your emotions in public better. It helps you be able to talk about it a little bit better without breaking down and bawling your eyes out."

Lisa McCuddin was shot on Oct. 2, 2004, when she was riding in a car driven by Fred Murray, of Omaha, Neb., to the Holiday Inn, now Americas Best Value Inn, 2001 U.S. Highway 169. Investigators don't believe she was the intended target.

At the time of the shooting, Fort Dodge police were responding to a separate shooting at the hotel when Murray pulled into the parking lot and told officers both he and McCuddin had been shot. His wounds were minor, and he was later treated and released at the Trinity Regional Medical Center.

Lisa McCuddin was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Her obituary was published on her 24th birthday.

Since then, Becky McCuddin is raising her daughter's two children. Markasia, 9, and Trez, 5. They have become her priority.

"It helps having her kids because I see so much of her in both of them," she said. "You try and be strong for them because you don't want to break down and bawl. You have to tell them what you can, in a way that they understand and without breaking their hearts."

Since Trez was only 10 months old at the time his mother was killed, he doesn't have as many questions as his older sister - yet. When they ask, McCuddin answers them as best she can.

"They know their mom was shot," McCuddin said. "They know that she was in a car at the time."

And then come the tough questions: "Well, who did it?" "Why did they do this?"

"I tell her, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time," McCuddin tells her granddaughter. "They didn't mean to shoot your mom - they just didn't care who was in the car."

The toughest times McCuddin faces these days are watching her grandchildren go through milestones, knowing their mother isn't there.

"Somebody robbed her of that chance to see her children grow up," McCuddin said. "Somebody took that away. My daughter deserved the right to see that. My daughter deserved the right to be able to potty-train her own son; take him to school for the first time; watch him take his first steps. She never got to see that. She never ever got to hear him say 'I love you, Mommy' because somebody took that away."

McCuddin deals with her own grief late at night.

"I wake up in the middle of the night and sit in the dark bawling my eyes out," she said. "But I regroup and go on."

She pulls strength from her family.

"The people around you - you lean on the rest of them and you pull yourself together for them," she said.

But, McCuddin said, there never will be closure for her daughter's death, only peace in having someone held accountable.

"She can't be laid to rest when all of this hasn't been laid to rest," McCuddin tells her granddaughter. "As soon as the people who did this are behind bars for the rest of their lives, we will be able to bury your mom and put her to rest. Until then, she stays with us."

Contact Angela Burch at (515) 573-2141 or aburch@messengernews.net