Local family devastated by daughter's death in San Diego

The night before Christmas Eve, Kalyn Denise O’Barr-Poteat downplayed her concerns that her new husband had anger management issues.

“She told me he broke a few things in the apartment, but she didn’t seem fearful,” Kelly O’Barr of McDonough said. “There was a lot more going on there that we will never know.”

Tuesday afternoon, O’Barr received a call from the San Diego police department that her 19-year-old daughter had been killed. The autopsy report, released Wednesday afternoon, showed the cause was ligature strangulation, San Diego Police Lt. Kevin Rooney said.

Lance Cpl. Patrick Poteat, 21, is facing one count of murder in the death of his wife of less than three months. Thursday afternoon Poteat pleaded not guilty to the charges and was given a bond of $1 million. He is being held in the San Diego County jail.

Just before 9 a.m. Tuesday, San Diego Police received a call from a male stating that his friend had contacted him. The friend wanted someone to call 911 and have police check his apartment in the 9300 block of Hillery Drive.

It was there that police found O’Barr-Poteat’s body.

In early September, Kalyn O’Barr-Poteat moved to San Diego. Poteat, a Marine, was based in California, and that was one of the reasons her daughter wanted to move.

“She just really wanted to go to California,” her mother said. “And if she made up her mind to do something, she did.”

O’Barr said her daughter, a star student at Ola High School in Henry County, was a member of the school’s first graduating class in 2008 and a member of the soccer team.

After graduation, she worked for a time as an exotic dancer. When she moved to San Diego, she continued in that line of work.

It was not the kind of job O’Barr said she would have chosen for her daughter.

“For her, it was just a job,” her mother said. “It was her way to make and save up a little money to go back to school. She was supposed to start taking classes at the end of the month.”

Mother and daughter would text a lot back and forth, and they also communicated on Facebook. It was the best mode of communication being that her daughter worked so late at night and slept for most of the day.

“She was a late sleeper anyway,” her mother remembers.

But with all she knew about her daughter, O’Barr is disturbed by the things she did not know. And she warns anyone who may be seeing signs from the person they are with that there could be problems to let someone know.

“People will help you,” she said. “We are finding out all kinds of things about her now. She was very trustworthy. She should not be dead.”

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