By Mandy Locke mlocke@newsobserver.com CHAPEL HILL Faith Hedgepeth spent much of her last night like a typ- ical college student, cramming at the library before blowing off steam with friends at a Chapel Hill dance club. The path that led the 19-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill student to the Trian- gle – and to her death – was anything but ordinary. Hedgepeth’s roommate found her cold and unresponsive on Sept. 7 in the bedroom of the apartment they shared near Durham. In the month since, Chapel Hill police have been close-lipped about their investigation, saying only that they don’t believe her death was random. As the days pass with no arrest and limited information, her family grows weary, looking for clues among the clusters of friends she had knitted to- gether over the past two years in Cha- pel Hill and Durham. Her father, Ro- land Hedgepeth, ticks through every conversation and visit with his daugh- ter from the past two years, looking for anything that could explain how his daughter met such a violent end. Some emergency radio communica- tion between responders referred to A bright light goes dark COURTESY OF ROLAND HEDGEPETH This photo was taken in June, the last time Roland Hedgepeth saw his daughter Faith alive. Faith Hedgepeth was getting her life together; her death is a mystery SEE HEDGEPETH, PAGE 17A
