Kidnapped holdup victim is found dead along roadway

— JONESBORO — A store supervisor who was robbed at gunpoint Sunday evening and then abducted was found dead along Interstate 555 in Poinsett County early Monday, police said.

Authorities found the body of Loretta Ann “Laurie” Pixler, 45, of Jonesboro on the interstate near the Payneway exit about 2 miles west of Marked Tree, said Capt. Lynn Waterworth of the Jonesboro Police Department.

Waterworth said she did not know how Pixler died, but said her body had been struck by a car on the interstate.

Pixler was the assistant manager of the Dollar Tree, a Jonesboro retail store in a shopping center at Nettleton Avenue and Red Wolf Boulevard near the center of the Craighead County city.

Waterworth said a man wearing a red bandanna confronted Pixler and another employee as they were leaving the store at 9:30 p.m. Sunday. The man pointed a weapon at the two and demanded money.

The suspect took the other employee’s phone and forced Pixler into her four door 2004 Hyundai Accent parked near the store. The two drove away, said the other employee, who was not named by police.

“While we were working the robbery, we heard a woman was found dead on I-555,” Waterworth said. “We discovered it was the woman who was taken.”

A motorist called the Arkansas State Police and said he hit “an unknown object” on the interstate. Police also found Pixler’s Accent crashed in a ditch on Arkansas 14 near where Pixler’s body was discovered.

Authorities sent Pixler’s body to the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock to determine the cause of death, Waterworth said. Pixler’s car also was sent to the laboratory.

Police spent Monday talking with store employees and obtaining video shot from security cameras.

A person who answered the telephone at the Dollar Tree store Monday said he could not comment on the robbery and referred calls to the store’s corporate headquarters in New York. A spokesman for the corporation left a message on his phone saying he would not be available until Wednesday. The employee at the Dollar Tree in Jonesboro would not talk about Pixler or how long she had worked there.

On a Saturday Facebook post, Pixler wrote, “Just because we get mad or upset at someone does not give people the right to kill us.”

On Sunday, less than 12 hours before she was killed, Pixler wrote on her Facebook page “Good morning everyone. Hope everybody has a beautiful day.”

Other store owners and employees in the University Shopping Center, where the Dollar Tree is located, said the abduction shocked them.

“We talked about this the other day,” said Jessie Moore, an employee of the Beauty Outlet, a salon supply store near the Dollar Tree.

“We close at 7 and our employees usually are gone by 7:30, so it’s not as late [as Dollar Tree].

“But it’s scary and we are all a little nervous.”

Moore said authorities talked to store employees Monday about how to deal with robbers.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Jonesboro Police Department at (870) 935-5657or Jonesboro Crimestoppers at (870) 935-7867.

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