Monday evening, Brandon Hamilton gave his wife a giant card and presents for Valentine's Day. Tuesday night, he sat in the Maryland Shock Trauma Center and watched her die.
Angelia Hamilton's life was taken by a gunman who walked into a Laurel mobile phone store where she worked just after noon and asked to see phones, then opened fire.
She was struck numerous times and died six hours later.
Last night, police were looking for the man who killed the 22-year-old woman.
"The only thing we talked about was moving back home and having kids," said Mr. Hamilton, 23.
The couple grew up in small towns in Oklahoma 10 miles apart.
He said they wanted to "try to buy some land to put a house on -- we hoped within the next five years."
The couple had been married for 2 1/2 years.
They met in Oklahoma in the spring of 1991, while Mr. Hamilton was home on a break from college.
Mr. Hamilton said they moved to Laurel in July 1993 to find better jobs and to be closer to Mr. Hamilton's brother Steven, a jockey at the Laurel racetrack.
The couple lived with their cat in a one-bedroom apartment in Laurel Square Apartments on the Prince George's County side of the city.
Mrs. Hamilton occasionally modeled for stores in Laurel Centre Mall.
She liked listening to music, watching Disney movies, going for walks and reading poetry.
Mr. Hamilton said she read him nursery rhymes every night before going to bed.
"Everybody that knew her loved her," said Mrs. Hamilton's 25-year-old brother, Calvin. She has another brother, Lance, 14.
Mr. Hamilton's mother, Lydia, said Angelia Hamilton was becoming the daughter she never had.
The slaying was "the kind of thing you hear about on the news and you never think it would happen to you," she said.
Police are calling the shooting an attempted robbery, but they said in a press release that "the reason the gunman opened fire remains a mystery."
Especially to Mr. Hamilton.
He said he was working Tuesday at Lightner Photography in Timonium.
He was waiting for the usual noontime phone call from her, but instead he got a call from one of her co-workers at Car Tel Mobile Communications, telling him his wife had been shot.
Mrs. Hamilton was flown to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center and was in surgery for four hours, hospital officials said. She was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m.
A search that included state police and U.S. Park Police helicopters and county K-9 units was conducted along Laurel-Fort Meade Road and in a nearby housing development, Russett, but authorities were unable to track down the suspect.
Funeral arrangements for Mrs. Hamilton are not complete, but the family said she will be buried in Oklahoma.