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Slain insurance auditor to be laid to rest

Sallie Rohrbach, of Angier, will be laid to rest Sunday, a day after hundreds attended a visitation in her honor.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — A slain state insurance auditor whose body was found in South Carolina will be laid to rest this Sunday.

The funeral service for Sallie Rohrbach, 44, of Angier, will take place at the Thomas Funeral Home, 401 N. Ennis St. in Fuquay-Varina, at 3 p.m. Rohrbach will then be buried in Raleigh Memorial Park, along Glenwood Avenue.

On Saturday, hundreds of friends and relatives – including state Insurance Commissioner Jim Long and Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison – attended a visitation for Rohrbach at the same funeral home.

“It’s unfortunate these things happen. It goes back to the times we are living in. Like I say, people don’t value human life anymore," Harrison said. "And something has got to change."

Rohrbach's brother-in-law serves as a Wake County deputy. 

Rohrbach's body was found Tuesday in a wooded area in Fort Mill, S.C., 25 miles from a Charlotte insurance agency that was the subject of a state insurance audit she was conducting.

The agency's owner, Michael Howell, 40, is charged with first-degree murder in her death. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say her death was connected to her duties as an agency examiner.

"Unfortunately, she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Harrison said. "She was doing her job and (was) an outstanding lady from everything I hear."

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said in Rohrbach's car and Howell's vehicle connected him to the homicide. They have not released further details about the case, including a cause of death.

However, a police source said that Rohrbach died of blunt force trauma and that the killing took place in Howell's office at the Dillworth Agency, which he owned.

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