SMYRNA - A brief Christian service was conducted Wednesday afternoon for a Marietta grocery clerk outside the Smyrna supermarket where she worked and made friends within Cobb's Hispanic immigrant community.

Angelica Robledo De La Rosa, 32, was gunned down by an alleged stalker just after noon Tuesday in the parking lot of Brito Supermarket & Taqueria in the South Cobb Village Shopping Center at 1991 South Cobb Drive, near Pat Mell Road, Cobb police reported.

According to investigators, De La Rosa was getting out of a companion's vehicle at the supermarket when she was approached and then shot several times by an armed man. She later died of her injuries at WellStar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta. The male companion sustained minor injuries after his car hit another vehicle in the parking lot while attempting to escape.

The shooter fled in a white van, and police warned authorities in other jurisdictions to look for it, police said.

Police in Gautier, Miss., located the van and took 46-year-old Armando Soto of Marietta into custody after a traffic stop, according to Cobb police spokesman Officer Joe Hernandez. Gautier is more than 300 miles from Marietta on the Gulf Coast near the Mississippi-Alabama border.

Soto is being held in the Pascagoula, Miss., jail on Cobb's charges of felony murder and aggravated assault.

De La Rosa was the mother of a 16-year-old girl in Mexico. She had been separated from her husband, who lives in Georgia, for about three years, according to friends.

About 100 people gathered for the service outside the supermarket, which was closed for about half an hour.

"She was a really friendly girl. She always ate with the family and things like that," Nancy De La Torre of Marietta said of her friend. "The family - the father and sisters live in Mexico, but what you see around here are friends and cousins. The close family lives in Mexico."

Jesus Brito is the owner of the Brito supermarket chain in metro Atlanta. He said he was in Forest Park at the time of the shooting, but said he heard that a man waited outside the supermarket for De La Rosa to arrive for work on Tuesday.

"This guy, I guess, already made the decision to do it," Brito said while standing inside the busy supermarket.

Brito said De La Rosa worked at his supermarket for two years. He said she was very dependable and had volunteered to help out at another one of his supermarkets for two weeks last month.

"The people there didn't want her to come back here. She was so sweet," Brito recalled. "She was very friendly with everybody. She was so nice. She was one of those sweet persons."

Humberto Soza, Brito supermarket's chief financial officer and general manager, said he wasn't surprised to see the large crowd that gathered for the abbreviated service on Wednesday.

"Everybody liked her," he said.

Cobb's Hernandez said it was apparent to investigators that "the relationship between Angelica Robledo De La Rosa and the armed male was a stalking situation."

"The male attempted to pursue a relationship with the victim; however she continually denied his requests. A series of disturbing incidents - over an extended period of time - were initiated by the male towards to victim, however they were never reported to authorities," he said.

De La Torre said she was surprised to learn that her friend of several years was being stalked. She said De La Rosa never mentioned such information to her.

Holly Comer directs the YWCA of Northwest Georgia, which runs domestic-violence hotlines and shelters, and she urged that anyone who is being harassed report the activity to police as soon as possible.

"You have to protect yourself. Law enforcement people are going to help you as best they can, and our law enforcement in Cobb are well trained and understand about stalking and domestic violence," Comer said. "We've learned from working with victims that they often have a gut feeling pretty early on that something is not right. You've got to listen to your instincts, and when that alarm bell goes off, you need to notify someone."

The YWCA's 24-hour domestic violence hotline number is (770) 427-3390. The YWCA has bilingual staff members and will find translators for almost any language, Comer said.

The Rev. Canon Isaias Rodriguez, an Episcopal priest at Atlanta's Cathedral of St. Philip and Hispanic Missioner in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, led the service in Spanish. He told the crowd that we all live in a mystery on earth.

"Sooner or later we are going to be in heaven with God. And even though this is a sad moment, she is in heaven," Rodriquez said. "We are praying for her, but she's telling God to take care of us."