Report: Suspect in Violent Athletic Store Death in Maryland Puzzles Investigators

The charges against her are shocking, but to some, they're simply unbelievable.

Police say Brittany Norwood became so enraged when Jayna Murray discovered she had stolen from the high-end Maryland athletic store where they worked that she allegedly proceeded to beat Murray to death inside the store March 11.

But those who know Norwood say it's difficult to comprehend that the bubbly, helpful athlete could be capable of a brutal murder.

This photo provided by the Montgomery County (Md.) Police Department shows Brittany Norwood.

MCPD / AP

Brittany Norwood, charged with the murder of a store co-worker in Maryland, had no violent history and is described by those who know her as friendly and upbeat.

"In the four years I knew Brittany, I never saw her upset, never saw her angry at anyone," Glentis Michel, a friend of Norwood's from New York's Stony Brook University, where Norwood was a soccer star, told The Washington Post. "She always had a big smile on her face."

Norwood had no violent history and is consistently described as friendly and upbeat. So investigators and friends of the 28-year-old woman are struggling to understand how she could have lost it so severely inside the Bethesda, Md., store that she crushed the skull and severed the spine of her co-worker, the Post says. Norwood's teammates from her college soccer team have said she had a reputation for petty theft but was never overly aggressive.

"It's beyond belief," Norwood's father, Earl Norwood, told the paper.

The father, who used to watch his daughter's soccer games near the family home in Kent, Wash., said he could not imagine a scenario in which Brittany would kill another human being. And making matters more vexing, investigators told the Post they believe Norwood and Murray had had no previous confrontation.

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Prosecutors say the two co-workers were alone inside the Lululemon Athletica store in suburban Maryland when they began arguing about items from the store Murray may have found in Norwood's bag. Then, they say, Norwood must have snapped, beating the 30-year-old Murray to death and then tying herself up in the store to make it look as if both women had been raped and assaulted by two intruders.

"There was definitely rage," Drew Tracy, a Montgomery County assistant police chief, told the Post. Norwood was charged with first-degree murder after police decided her story didn't line up with the facts.

Norwood has not commented publicly on the case, and her attorneys declined to comment today.