In the summer of 2010, a trip to Atlanta for a North Carolina woman ended in a tragic and violent death that left her family and friends searching for answers. Zaquavia Kingsberry, a 33-year-old female, was discovered shot to death on July 14, 2010, inside an upscale Buckhead apartment. A mother of two, she was visiting a friend in the city at the time of her death.
The initial discovery was made by her friend who, upon returning to the apartment, found her unresponsive and bleeding from the head. He immediately contacted emergency services, but it was too late.
Investigators quickly determined that Kingsberry had been shot multiple times. While the initial moments of the investigation were frantic and filled with uncertainty, the focus soon shifted to the events that transpired within the apartment complex on Roswell Road. Police began to piece together a timeline, suggesting that the motive for the killing was not personal but rather a robbery gone tragically wrong. Detectives theorized that a large sum of cash, visible on a desk inside the apartment, had attracted the attention of someone who had been in the residence earlier that day. It is believed that after the men who were in the apartment left, the individual returned with the intention of stealing the money, not anticipating that Kingsberry was still inside.
The investigation led police to identify a person of interest, Stephen Smith. According to authorities, Smith had been at the apartment on the day of the murder and had a relative who lived in the same building, granting him familiarity and access. Police expressed a strong desire to question him, noting that he had not come forward and had been unresponsive to their attempts to make contact. Detectives publicly dismissed any speculation of a love triangle, stating their belief that the occupant of the apartment and another man present earlier had no romantic involvement with Kingsberry. The focus remained on the theory that she was the unfortunate victim of a theft that escalated to murder when the perpetrator was startled by her presence. Despite identifying a person of interest, the case has been marked by a lack of public updates on any arrests or convictions in the years following her death.
