They both had the rest of their lives in front of them, but the similarities ended there for 21-year-old Kim Kilgore and the 22-year-old woman alleged to have shot and killed her.
“Life is funny,” Kilgore, a junior at Kennesaw State, would often tell her friends. And she enjoyed every minute of it.
“Give her a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks and she’d be happy the rest of the day,” close friend Rebekah Gillis said. “She found so much joy in the little things.”
In the early morning hours of Oct. 10, Kilgore, Gillis and two other friends pulled their white SUV into the Shiloh Green Apartments in Kennesaw after attending a birthday party. Kilgore, from Paulding County, was the designated driver.
A black Mustang pulled in just behind them. Gillis said neither she nor Kilgore knew the young women in the other car. Among the passengers, according to Cobb County police: 22-year-old Sparkles Lindsey, also known as Shay.
Soon after, a “heated verbal exchange” ensued, Cobb police spokesman Dana Pierce said. The incident report cited road rage, though it did not state what prompted the confrontation inside the gated complex, where at least one passenger in each vehicle resided, Pierce said.
“I was in the passenger seat and she was looking right at me when it happened,” Kilgore’s friend Shannon Stone told mourners Oct. 15 at a vigil held at Kennesaw State. “I was the last sight she saw before her life was taken, and I couldn’t stop it.”
Gillis said she was told by police not to discuss details of the incident with the media. Here’s what is known: Kilgore was shot once in the head. Police say Lindsey fired the fatal bullet, then fled with her friends in the Mustang, leaving the 21-year-old communications major clinging to life. Kilgore died a few hours later at WellStar Kennestone Hospital.
Little is known about her alleged assailant, arrested the following day and charged with murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Police won’t say who was in the car with Lindsey that morning, and her Facebook page offers few details about the Pebblebrook High School graduate’s life. She’s stone-faced in the photographs made available to visitors, showing off heavily tattooed arms.
Her criminal record is a bit more revealing. Lindsey, being held without bond in Cobb County Jail, was sentenced to five years’ probation in April for beating up a former female classmate at Pebblebrook and obstructing a law enforcement officer. It was her second battery charge in as many years. In 2009, she was caught shoplifting and, two weeks after that arrest, she was cited with a probation violation.
Meanwhile, Kilgore’s friends and family are left to ponder what should have been.
“We had so many plans for next year,” Gillis said. The friends were going to rent a house in Kennesaw and were looking forward to taking a cruise during what would’ve been their last spring break as undergrads.
After college, Kilgore, whose funeral was held Wednesday, hoped to get a job in public relations with Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta, Gillis said.
“I feel like she’s on vacation and I’m going to see her again in a few days” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “No matter how much pain she might be dealing with, she handled it so gracefully. She didn’t let negativity affect her.”
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