Atlanta slaying victim left behind 8 children

The woman who was gunned down outside an Atlanta check-cashing store last week had eight children, one grandchild and had gone back to school to become a dental assistant, her mother said.

Stephanie Seabrum, whose nickname was “Step,” had never married but was engaged to her longtime boyfriend, said her mother, Sharon Seabrum.

She was shot to death early Saturday after two robbers accosted her outside the business in the Hightower Station shopping center on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, shooting her once in the chest while her fiance waited for her in a nearby car, police said.

Police are searching for two suspects in the shooting death.

“They took a beautiful person and messed up a lot of people’s hearts,” Sharon Seabrum said. “I’m praying for somebody to be caught. This was senseless.”

Step Seabrum, 36, first got pregnant as a young teenager, and by the time she graduated high school in Alabama, she already had two children and was pregnant with a third.

“She went down the aisle with one in her belly,” Sharon Seabrum, 52, said.

In recent years, Step Seabrum told her mother that she wanted 10 kids.

“I told her to go ahead: You only got two more to go,” Sharon Seabrum said.

Her mother described Step Seabrum as a happy woman with a big smile and a bubbly personality. “Always greeted you with a hug and a kiss,” Sharon Seabrum said.

Aside from graduating from high school, Step Seabrum’s greatest accomplishment was returning to school to be a dental assistant, her mother said.

She had worked for a dentist in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood, but was not currently employed and was looking for a job with another dentist, her mother said.

Sharon Seabrum said that she will take custody of four of her daughter’s children and the grandchild, while the other four children will be cared for by others.