Murder victim Samantha Maag recalled as 'a complete sweetheart'
GLOUCESTER TWP. – A South Jersey woman slain in a Philadelphia office building is being remembered as "a complete sweetheart" and "a kind and caring individual."
Samantha "Sami" Maag, 31, was fatally assaulted Wednesday afternoon at her workplace on the 300 block of Chestnut Street, according to Philadelphia police.
A Philadelphia man, 48-year-old Jeffrey Stepien, was arrested at the scene a short time later.
Maag, who lived in the Blenheim section of Gloucester Township, "was a kind and caring individual who was hard-working at everything she did," a family obituary said.
The Rowan University graduate was “an absolute gem,” said a Facebook post by Dominick Pollino, who knew Maag from her job as a receptionist at Regus, a firm that provides office, co-working and meeting space at the Chestnut Street location.
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Maag “always had a smile on her face and something nice to say," said Pollino, whose Facebook page identifies him as a Clarksboro resident.
"She defined the perfect person you would want to have all of your customers first greeted by when they walked through the door," he said, describing her as "a complete sweetheart."
Philadelphia police officers found Maag with severe head injuries after responding to a disturbance on the building's eighth floor around 2:15 p.m.
She was pronounced dead at a downtown hospital around an hour later.
Officers encountered Stepien, who was holding two pipes, and arrested him without incident, said a police account.
It said investigators have witness accounts and surveillance video of the incident.
Stepien is charged with murder and a weapons offense. The charges are only allegations and he has not been convicted in the case.
Maag was a graduate of Triton Regional High School in Runnemede, where she belonged to the National Honor Society and the French Honor Society, according to the obituary posted by Earle Funeral Home in Blackwood.
"Sami was an avid reader and writer," it noted. "Sami loved listening to music, attending concerts, baking and high-fashion."
Maag's interest in fashion led her to become a customer, and then a valued friend, at a Haddonfield consignment shop, The Lavish Loft, noted the shop's owner, Lisa Netz.
“She started coming into our store about five years ago,” Netz said in an interview. "She was really quiet at first … But we cultivated a friendship and she started coming out of her shell."
"When she’d put something on that just worked for her, it made her feel really good," Netz continued. "As she grew more confident, you could she was taking more risks fashion-wise.”
"We laughed with her, we cried with her and we certainly lived vicariously through her fashion, her life and her love stories,” noted a post at the shop's Facebook page.
"She was such a kind soul who was just getting started on her true path and was just finding herself."
Jim Walsh covers public safety, economic development and other beats for the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal.
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This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Samantha Maag, Blenheim woman slain in Philadelphia, recalled as 'gem'
