Abbey Hebert was 17 years old.
She loved softball and the beach, and went on mission trips with her church. She smiled always, and worked part-time at a local pizza joint. A senior at Cobb County’s Allatoona High School, she’d recently decided she wanted to be a nurse.
“She just finally found her way in life,” her father, Steve, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
On Saturday, that life ended.
Hebert was stabbed to death at her Acworth home, and police believe 18-year-old Olivia Smith — who Steve Hebert identified as his daughter's step-cousin — is responsible.
According to Cobb County police Officer Alicia Chilton, authorities responded to the Blowing Wind Court home where Hebert lived with her mother and stepfather at about 8:50 a.m., finding the teen dead in the front yard.
Smith, a Canton resident, was taken into custody at the scene and charged with felony murder. She is being held at the Cobb County jail without bond.
No possible motive has been released, and an initial incident report was not available Sunday.
“Due to this case being active, detectives will not release motive or much more info at this point,” Chilton said in an email.
Steve Hebert, a former law enforcement officer, declined to discuss, specifically, what detectives have told him about the case.
“It was a senseless act, I’ll tell you that, from what I know,” he said.
Phone messages left at the home where Hebert was killed were not immediately returned Sunday.
Saturday night, hundreds of students gathered at Allatoona High School’s football stadium for a vigil in Hebert’s memory. They lit candles, sang and prayed.
A day later, longtime friend Savanna Mitchell was still too broken up to talk about Hebert — too broken up to talk aloud about the girl she’d known since first grade, graced the softball diamond with, gone on family vacations with. Too broken up, certainly, to talk about how her life was taken.
So she texted instead.
“We were two peas in a pod and you never saw us separated,” Mitchell wrote. “She wasn’t just my best friend, she was my sister, and she will be missed dearly and loved for eternity.”
