Police: Holdup victim dead

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 bandana 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 fourdoor 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.