GUILTY GA - Rebecca Foley, 21, found murdered, Savannah, 21 Jan 2013

It happened at about 7 p.m. at the Colonial Village apartment complex on White Bluff Road. "When officers arrived they found a female who had been shot in a car. She had expired on the scene," SCMPD spokesman Julian Miller said. Police said the victim was identified as 21-year-old Rebecca Foley. Her boss said Foley was a student at Savannah State University...

SCMPD's Miller says it appears the car was moving when Foley was shot.

Police surrounded a red VW Bug with police tape in the complex parking lot. Foley's body was found about 100 feet away from that vehicle. Police are still trying to determine how she got there.

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Carolyn Foley said Rebecca contacted her about a month before she died. Rebecca said she was trying to decide whether she should turn something in, but said she couldn’t text Carolyn or tell her over the phone. Carolyn never saw her granddaughter again. “She was trying to make a decision as to what she was going to do as if she knew something that was illegal or not right. And I don’t know what it was,” Carolyn Foley said.

The Foleys say Rebecca’s boyfriend and some of her closest friends wanted nothing to do with them after the murder. Eddie Foley said he talks to Savannah-Chatham Metro Police about once a week. Foley said they tell him there’s a person of interest and that they’re still doing interviews. But besides that, there’s nothing new.

“There were things missed at the original investigation at the murder scene that it’s just inexcusable,” Eddie Foley said. “I feel the police just fumbled this case from the word go.”

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Jury selection was halted Tuesday morning for three Savannah men charged with murder and related offenses in the 2013 slaying of Savannah State University student Rebecca Lorraine Foley in what prosecutors charge was a gang-related slaying.

Chatham County Superior Court Judge Louisa Abbot halted trial before the second day of jury selection after prosecutors announced their intent to appeal one of her rulings made yesterday in the case.

At issue was a motion made on Monday by Assistant District Attorney Frank Pennington II to sever defendant Kevin Lenard Smith, 23 from the others on trial.

Prosecutors were concerned that if Smith remained on trial with the other defendants they would be limited in use of his statements to police which implicated another co-defendant with the purchase of a firearm police identified as the weapon used to kill Foley. That would have required prosecutors to materially alter their case and deprive them of what they considered key evidence in the case.

There’s no time frame for the decision by the Supreme Court, so the case will remain in limbo for an undetermined period of time.

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The three were already incarcerated on unrelated charges when they were served warrants for their arrests in the Foley case, reported Savannah Now...

There was one bullet hole through her back window, and it had hit the bubbly student, killing her...

Foley's mom, Jennifer, says police told her that the three suspects had allegedly murdered her daughter while trying to rob her.

But while investigators said they hoped the arrests bring closure to Foley's family, Rebecca's mom said it didn't.

'I guess we thought it would bring us closure, but I don't feel closure. Perhaps at sentencing we will,' she told NBC News.

'Your children aren't supposed to go first. She was a 21-year-old girl just beginning her beautiful life. It's not supposed to be like that.'

Jennifer and her other daughter, Beni, have moved to Savannah to be closer to the case as it works its way through the courts.

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The court overturned a Chatham County judge’s ruling that barred the jury from hearing a statement from Kevin Lenard Smith, one of three men indicted for the murder of Rebecca Lorraine Foley.

Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Michael P. Boggs ruled that Smith’s statement on Parrish “should have concluded further that the statement would be admissible against Smith with an instruction to the jury to consider the statement only against him.”

The court found that Smith’s statement didn’t directly incriminate Parrish.

“The trial court therefore erred in ruling that the statement is wholly inadmissible,” the unanimous court ruled.

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