COBB COUNTY, Ga. — What was supposed to be a relaxing walk turned into a shocking discovery for a Cobb County woman. Jenifer Webster Allman came across an urn on the side of a road, and now she is trying to find the owner of it.
“We saw it laying on its side and it looks like its maybe damaged at the top but when I look inside there’s definitely a bag and its definitely full of something. Until we can get it open or somebody claims it, we won’t know what the mystery is," she tells 11Alive exclusively. "How did this come to be here?"
That's the big question in her head. She normally walks along the sidewalk of the busy Old Mill Trce and Terrell Mill Road intersection.
In fact, she walked it Monday night. On Tuesday, she discovered something shiny on the grass. She noticed the turquoise urn with seagull designs.
"I thought it was a really odd object sitting on the side of the road," she said. "Seeing a cup or an old mask is one thing but seeing a shiny vase is just kind of out of place. I think this is a person-sized urn and I really would like to return it to the person who had it.”
"A lot of people have just told me to put it back and not get involved and that’s part of the reason I felt like I had to pick it up because so many people just continue to walk past," she said. "I don’t know how long it would lay here or somebody would pick it up and throw it in the trash. I just think that’s a really bad end for possibly somebody’s remains."
She turned to Facebook and the Nextdoor app for help. She also called the Cobb County non-emergency number and even a morgue, who suggested she open the urn to potentially find an identification tag inside or the number for a crematorium.
The top of the urn has a hole but she said it was quite impossible to open up.
"It's pretty heavy. I grabbed it, took it home, took a look at it, tried to get into it," she added. "I shook it and knew that something was inside it."
For over 24 hours now, she's continued to search for the owners. She hopes someone along the busy road saw something that could help figure that out. She hopes someone see this story and could provide her with answers.
"I actually heard a story about somebody who was carjacked," she recalled. "When they were carjacked, their parents urn was in the back and that stuck with me. I didn’t want that to happen to someone else. I always live by the mantra try to do one good deed every day – this is my good deed.”
Jenifer said she’s not quite sure what she’ll do if she can’t find the owners.
If you happen to have any information on the urn, email 11Alive reporter Paola Suro at psuro@11alive.com. She will work to connect the potential owner of the urn to Jenifer.
