Family, friends missing Briana, Lugoff teen killed a year ago

A little over a year ago, members of the tight-knit town of Lugoff were devastated when they received the news that 18-year-old Briana Rabon had been found dead after going missing a few hours earlier.

The pain of losing Rabon has persisted for her loved ones and friends, they say, as they wait for her accused killer to go to trial.

A trial date for 21-year-old Stephen Ross Kelly, has not been set.

Rabon’s body was found behind the Haig’s Creek subdivision in Elgin on Feb. 26, 2014, shortly after her car was found at an area Huddle House.

Savannah Locke, one of Rabon’s best friends through high school, said she often finds herself driving to Marble Slab ice cream shop to get a concoction of birthday cake ice cream and brownies – one of Rabon’s favorite combinations.

“I get it every time, and I never get anything different since she died,” Locke said.

Locke, 19, said she remembers every moment she spent with Rabon, a relationship that began in 10th grade during a fight Locke was having with one of their mutual friends.

“I had this friend named India, and Briana was one of her friends, too,” Locke said. “I was yelling at Briana about our other friend and, somehow, we became friends.”

Even though the girls attended rival high schools – Locke went to Camden and Rabon to Lugoff-Elgin – they would spend time together, driving around in Locke’s Volkswagen “Bug” with the top down, singing to their favorite rap songs or tanning by the pool.

“She was so happy and always upbeat,” Locke said. “Briana didn’t care what anyone else thought of her, and she was the best friend you could ever have. You didn’t have to wear a certain type of clothes or have money or have to be anything to be her friend.”

Locke said Rabon was a tough girl, but one thing she had a soft spot for was children.

Early childhood education instructor Allyssa Cokely said when Rabon was with her students “she flourished.”

“She had what it took to work with children,” said Cokely, who directs a pre-school teaching program at the Applied Technology Education campus in Kershaw County. “I can’t say there has been a day since her murder that she hasn’t been on my mind. She touched all of our lives, and the little children that were here remembered her.”

Locke said the day of Rabon’s death, the two were hanging out at Locke’s house eating their go-to lunch of frozen cheese pizza and coke before Locke had to go to soccer practice.

“I was meant to be with her, her last day,” Locke said.

Locke said her brother, another of Rabon’s close friends, gave Rabon his old car radio, but couldn’t install it for her. Rabon then went to a local Wal-Mart to see if someone there would be able to install it.

While she was there, 17-year-old Mackenzie Corder, who considered herself a stepsister to Rabon, said she ran into her. It was the last time she saw her.

“She told me she was looking for a radio to put in her car or was looking for someone to do it for her, and then she was going to hang out with some guys afterward,” Corder said.

Rabon went to the home of another friend, who knew how to install the radio. While she was there, she met up with Stephen Ross Kelly.

Corder said Kelly had attended Lugoff-Elgin High and that she and Rabon also met up with him during a spring break trip one year. But she didn’t think Rabon and Kelly socialized much after that. Reports when her body was found suggested that Kelly and Rabon had worked together at the Hooters restaurant along Two Notch Road but were only acquaintances. At the time of her death, Rabon worked as a hostess at the Texas Roadhouse and the Tilted Kilt in Harbison.

Locke said after she saw Rabon that day, Rabon texted her about six times. Locke she didn’t return the texts because she was mad at her friend for hanging out with people she disapproved of.

The next morning, “I texted her, ‘Good morning, I love you,’” Locke said. But Rabon did not respond.

Locke was on the team bus, on her way to the first soccer scrimmage of the year when she received a call from Rabon’s mother asking if she had seen or spoken to her daughter that day. Locke said she immediately knew things weren’t right.

“I felt it in my stomach that something was wrong, and I needed to get off the bus,” Locke said.

Meanwhile, Kershaw County sheriff’s investigators were responding to a wooded area behind the Haig’s Creek subdivision after receiving reports of a body being found by people riding four-wheelers in the area.

“I remember going out to the scene ... and I remember seeing her body,” Sheriff Jim Matthews said. “While we are investigating the case, Briana Rabon’s mother comes in and said her daughter is missing. So we are getting this report of a missing girl, and we are out on the scene, so it starts to look like this could be Briana Rabon.”

Although Rabon moved out of her mother’s house, she would still text or call her mother throughout the day to let her know what she was doing. Matthews said Rabon’s mother became worried after those calls and texts stopped coming, and no one else had heard from her, either.

Because the Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office does not have a full forensics or major crimes unit, S.C. State Law Enforcement Division agents were called in to process the scene. Investigators collected tire tracks, DNA evidence and surveillance footage that placed Kelly at a gas station close to where Rabon’s body was found around the time of her death.

As investigators questioned Kelly, Matthews said, his story changed a number of times as to where he was and what he was doing the night of Rabon’s death. Kelly requested his lawyer before the Sheriff’s Office charged him with murder, kidnapping and first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

“You think about your own wife and your own daughter when you see these things,” Matthews said. “Seeing her body out there, a young girl in the condition that it was in, it immediately elicits the emotion of anger.”

But Matthews said nobody won with Kelly’s arrest.

Following the announcement of her death, Matthews said the outpouring from the community was unrivaled for both the Kelly and Rabon families.

“ Stephen’s little brother was killed in an ATV accident shortly before this happened,” Matthews said. “So now the Kelly family has lost one son, and now they are going to lose the other son. It was an overall bad situation all the way around.”

Matthews said one of his friends who is a chaplain for the University of South Carolina football team presided over a Fellowship of Christian Athletes service at Lugoff-Elgin High School that was scheduled prior to Rabon’s death.

“At the end of the service he told me he has never seen such a response from young people than what he saw on that night,” Matthews said.

Although the community showed support for Rabon’s loved ones, Locke said there is nothing that can be done to truly honor the life of her friend. Locke said she still has nightmares about Rabon and has taken a semester off from school to get back on track following the news of Rabon’s death. She still finds herself driving around, just as they used to, talking to her friend, apologizing.

“Sometimes I get to a sad place and regret going to soccer that day, and I apologize I wasn’t there with her,” Locke said. “Then there are those happy times, and that is when I put my ‘bug’s’ top down, blast our favorite songs and go to Marble Slab.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2015 at 7:43 PM with the headline "Family, friends missing Briana, Lugoff teen killed a year ago."