GARY | Josiah Shaw only got to the Gs.

The 13-month-old loved to sing the alphabet. He would sit at his Baby Einstein piano and belt out letters, said his mother, 29-year-old Kwana Shaw.

"I never got to hear him sing past G," she said.

More than five months after he was shot to death in an apparent Gary carjacking, his abbreviated alphabet is one of the countless memories Shaw has of her son.

On Jan. 28, after visiting a friend in Gary, Shaw was buckling her son into her sport utility vehicle when a man approached her and shot her, police have said.

Police later found Josiah Shaw in the stolen SUV, shot in the chin and pelvis. Recovering from her own injuries in the hospital, Kwana Shaw later learned her son had been killed.

Days after the shooting, Gary police questioned the boy's father, Terry L. Bethel, 34, of Portage, as a person of interest in the case. Bethel was released days later and has faced no charges in the shooting.

As part of the ongoing investigation, prosecutors said they have folded the shooting into another case in which Bethel allegedly conspired to disprove he fathered a child.

In January, a woman who answered the door at Bethel's listed address said she had no comment. Last week, a man painting inside of the house called Bethel a "previous owner" of the home.

Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter said he meets with Gary detectives regularly to discuss the case and Bethel remains a person of interest.

Months later, Kwana Shaw said she is "getting better" but still battles an inner burden.

"I couldn't protect him," she once told her aunt. "I'm a mommy. I'm supposed to take care of him."

In some ways, her life has not changed much. She still dreams of running her own skin care business. She said she still believes in the best in people, but that has been difficult.

"I thought, 'Should I ever trust people or feel for people?'" she said.

Now instead of kissing her son every day, she kisses a picture of him sitting with Santa.

She has had to train herself not to veer toward the baby food aisle in the grocery store. Long walks or a leisurely couch rest now induce aches in her back or abdomen, or both.

A bullet that tore through her intestines, stole her kidney and nicked her spine still rests somewhere in her body. She is not quite sure where.

"I didn't think I was going to make it," she said.

At one point, she pretended to cry over turning 30 in September. Then she paused.

"It's a blessing, I know," she said.

It now is hard to pass parks to which she wanted to take Josiah or schools she wanted him to attend. She doesn't like to think of the clothing hanging in a closet that bares the "24 months" tags or the lessons she hoped he would learn -- including the rest of his letters.

"I wanted him to be different than a lot of people in this world," she said.

Shaw expressed frustration that more people have not come forward to authorities with information about the shooting.

"You know people know," she said. "It's going to unravel."

When it unravels is not up to her, she realizes.

"Everything happens at the right time," she said. "God's not going to let that go."