Police knocked on Louisiana native Paul Rice’s door at 4:45 a.m. last Friday, waking him up. He assumed that something had happened in the area and had no idea that he was going to learn the worst possible news. Later, he learned that his 21-year-old daughter Allison, a senior at Louisiana State University, had been discovered dead inside her car, shot hours earlier in downtown Baton Rouge.
“We woke up to our dogs barking and the doorbell ringing,” Rice told “The Story” Fox News on Monday. “Cops have shown up in the middle of the night before for various reasons, things going on in the neighborhood and all, but when they asked, ‘are you Allison’s father, can we come in, please?’ you knew at that point that it was going to be something terrible. I never could have imagined that the news would have been what it was.”
The Baton Rouge Police Department reported to WAFB-TV that Rice was discovered shot to death early on Friday morning in her bullet-riddled automobile on Government Street close to railroad tracks. She might have been waiting for a train to pass when the incident took place, investigators informed the news source. Rice, who was studying marketing at LSU and had just turned 21 years old, grew up in a suburb outside of Baton Rouge. She was scheduled to graduate in May and had secured an internship.
Rice told “The Story” that he believes his daughter’s death was a case of being in “the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“The only thing that I can really think at this point is it’s a bad case of wrong place at the wrong time. She’s not anyone that had enemies. We don’t think that she was being stalked or followed,” he said. “That particular area of Baton Rouge has a history of this type of activity.”
Rice told “The Story” that he believes his daughter’s death was a case of being in “the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“The only thing that I can really think at this point is it’s a bad case of wrong place at the wrong time. She’s not anyone that had enemies. We don’t think that she was being stalked or followed,” he said. “That particular area of Baton Rouge has a history of this type of activity.”
A devastated Rice wonders how he got into the unthinkable situation of planning his 21-year-old daughter’s funeral while police look for any clue about Allison’s death.
“That’s something that as a parent I should never have to plan a funeral for my child. My mother should not have to be involved in a funeral for her grandchild,” he said. “This is just heartbreaking.”
“This is being taken very seriously,” he said, “….But despite that, all indications right now are there are no leads. They really don’t have an explanation at this point…as of now, [in] that particular stretch of town, they don’t have the surveillance that is necessary.”
