Post by Joanna on Feb 3, 2015 18:34:41 GMT -5
Woman Murdered in Parking Lot
LENOIR, N.C. – Police found the body of Hope Marie Story Webb, 39, in the parking lot of Creekway Apartments early Sunday morning. According to a news release from the Lenoir Police Department, officers responded to a 911 call from the apartments, located at 558 Creekway Drive in Lenoir, at 2:39 a.m. They found Webb beside her vehicle, with a knife wound in her chest, according to an incident report. Webb’s death was declared a homicide. The State Bureau of Investigations is also investigating. Lenoir Police Department Capt. Couby Stilwell said no arrests have been made. “There’s no new information right now,” Stilwell said. “We’re still working on it.” The report listed Ashley Allison Stewart, 27, as someone involved in the incident, but Stilwell declined to say how Stewart was involved
The apartment complex is located on an isolated stretch of road in Lenoir. The owner, Richard Poarch, said Webb did not live at the apartments. “We do not have any information,” Poarch said. “The only thing we do know is that she was not a resident.”
Tufts of grass and a few overturned plastic chairs are all that are left in the parking lot now. Seven miles away, at Webb’s home at 2015 Connelly Springs Road in Lenoir, her family is still processing the news. “It was a shock,” said her husband, Tim Webb. “All I know is she was bludgeoned, stabbed to death.”
Tim Webb said he had no idea what his wife was doing at the apartment complex. “I don’t know if she had friends there. I guess she did, since her car was there," he said. A tall, burly man, Tim Webb began to cry as he remembered his wife of three years. “She was a wonderful daughter, wife, grandmother,” he said. “Her family was everything.”
Hope Webb was a family woman and Lenoir native who had graduated from West Caldwell High School, her husband said. According to Tim Webb, she had worked as a bartender before taking time off to help raise her 3-year-old grandson. “She knew everybody. We couldn’t go into a store where we didn’t run into somebody she knew," Tim Webb said.
Hope Webb’s mother, Vickie Maynard, said her daughter always had a “big ol’ smile on her face. She loved to sing. She loved music. She made everybody feel loved.”
Tim Webb said the death may have been because of a personal or drug-related dispute. But it’s hard to reconcile that with the loving wife and mother he knew. “She had a big family and a big heart,” he said. “She was beautiful.”
Police are asking anyone with information about the case to call the Lenoir Police Department at 828-757-2100 or report anonymously to Lenoir/Caldwell County Crimestoppers at 828-758-8300.
Source: Daphne Chen, The Hickory Record, February 3, 2015.
