Her name is ZaQuavia Kingsberry and she was 33-years-old when she died.
Kingsberry’s mysterious death is making headlines in Atlanta, not because of how she lived but because of where she died: an upscale apartment complex in the tony Buckhead hamlet of Atlanta.
As sad as her story is, it is likely that we never would have heard of ZaQuavia Kingsberry had she been found dead in Bankhead Courts.
According to the AJC, in a story titled “Little information surrounding Buckhead apartment murder,” ZaQuavia Kingsberry was found shot to death in her boyfriend’s Buckhead apartment Wednesday afternoon.
She had been shot two or three times, Atlanta Police Maj. Keith Meadows said. “It was not a random act,” said Carlos Campos, Atlanta police spokesman, to the media and neighbors assembled outside.
The boyfriend’s name has not been released. But according to the AJC, Kingsberry was found in her boyfriend’s fourth-floor apartment at the Gramercy at Buckhead Apartments, which the AJC continuously refers to as “distinctive apartment homes.”
The AJC reporter paid a great a great deal of attention to Kingsberry’s neighbors — especially Caragh Stichter, 24, a young, pretty blond, who busied herself calling other neighbors in the complex to report the incidence of violent urban crime in their midst.
“Your next door neighbor was shot and killed,” she said while on the phone.
“I’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary here,” Stichter told the AJC. “It’s a safe community. You say that it could never happen, but it happened three doors down from me.”
“Everyone is like, ‘We want to break our lease,’” Stichter said.
And that pretty much sums up the story in the AJC. It’s not so much about ZaQuavia’s tragic death as it is about the “distinctive” Buckhead apartment complex where she died — and the upper middle class white residents who are stunned that urban violence has hit so close to home.
ZaQuavia’s young, upper crust neighbors thought their expensive Buckhead address insulated them from the urban violence that plagues their neighbors to the South.
Kingsberry, 33, was visiting from Raleigh, N.C., where she worked at a homeless shelter. She also was a single mother, with children ages 15 and 4, according to Anne Burke, executive director of Urban Ministries, which runs the shelter.
“We’re all in shock,” Burke told the AJC on Thursday. “The women will be coming back into the shelter at 4 this afternoon, they’ll probably have heard about it by then. This is going to be a very difficult day for all of us.”
Thanks to the AJC, we now know Zaquavia Kingsberry’s name — not because of how she lived, but because of where she died.
Source: AJC
Thanks to loyal reader Kay Wallace for the tip.
