Shooting shocks Thibodaux: Woman found dead in family’s store

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A 57-year-old matriarch killed while tending her family’s convenience store is being widely mourned by a community both angered and baffled by the crime.

Thibodaux Police Chief Scott Silveri says his detectives are working hard on leads regarding the Dec. 26 shooting death of Lillian Alexis, regarded as a surrogate mother by many in the city’s Midland community, at Mojeaux’s convenience store on Tiger Drive, a short distance from Thibodaux High School.


Police have released scant details of the incident, which occurred shortly before 8:30 p.m.

But a witness to the crime confirmed that he told police two men, likely in their early 20s, entered bent on robbery, and that at least one of them brandished a gun.

Burnell Tolbert, who is president of the Lafourche Parish NAACP and is related to the family, said he was shocked when he learned of Alexis’ death.


“She was like a loving mother to everybody,” Tolbert said.

The victim’s son, Jarmarrit Alexis, owns the store although Lillian played a major role in running it. Her seafood plate lunches were a favorite of many locals; she was someone people could confide in, people who gathered to memorialize her at the now-shuttered store said.

“Nobody needed to rob her,” said Lafourche Parish School Board member Richmond Boyd Jr. “If someone needed anything, she would have given it to them.”


“She was the nicest kindest person you ever wanted to meet,” said a niece, Glenda Broomfield. “It doesn’t seem real yet.”

Broomfield helped cook and serve food when the store held its grand opening in 2011. The Alexis family is respected in the community, she said, for its entrepreneurial spirit. Jarmarrit also owns Alexis’ Sports Bar in Paincourtville.

The Midland neighborhood, although generally quiet, has been the scene of violence in the past, in some cases connected to rivalries between quasi-gang members in the area and similarly-disposed young men in Raceland and other communities.


But the store, Tolbert and others said, has never been a magnet for trouble. It is located on a well-traveled thoroughfare, across from a convenience store and gas station and an apartment complex. Business, relatives said, was usually brisk.

An autopsy had been scheduled for Monday morning, and by press time an official cause of death and details on Alexis’ injuries had not been released.

Thibodaux Police Department spokesman David Melancon asked that anyone with information on the incident call 985-446-5021.


A makeshift memorial outside Mojeaux’s convenience store on Tiger Drive was erected Monday. Lillian Alexis, 57, the matriarch of the family business was shot inside the store Dec. 26. A witness reportedly told Thibodaux Police two men entered the store shortly before 8:30 p.m. intent on robbing it.

 

JAMES LOISELLE | THE TIMES