LSU Student Murdered Was The 'Life Of The Party,' Says Uncle At Allison Rice's Funeral

BATON ROUGE - Allison "Allie" Rice, a 21-year-old LSU student set to graduate in May, "danced literally all the time," her Uncle Mickey said inside a packed St. John Catholic Church in the Baton Rouge area on Wednesday afternoon.

"Those beautiful blue eyes from her mother Angela, her infectious smile," he said at the funeral. "She could be goofy with family, but she was very, very smart. She just knew how to make people laugh and make fast friends."

Rice was visiting a friend last Thursday, a night as popular to LSU students for socializing as weekend nights, at a bar in an area of Government Street with several bars and restaurants. On her way toward the Interstate 10 entrance on Government a few blocks from the bar after its 2 a.m. closing, she had stopped as a train crossed between 15th and 14th streets. She was shot multiple times just before 2:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 16, and pronounced dead at the scene, Baton Rouge Police said.

As of Wednesday, Baton Rouge Police had no suspects.

"It is an active investigation, and I cannot give much specific information," Baton Rouge Police spokesman Don Coppola told OutKick.

Asked if a shooter or shooters were in another car or on foot, Coppola could not offer more information. The surrounding neighborhood of the crime scene is considered a rough one.

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore was asked by WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge about a popular theory circulating - if the shooting was a form of gang initiation.

"It's way too early to tell," Moore said. "That's not anything that's jumping out to me as a person who has done this for years. This appears to be a totally isolated, random type act."

Nearly a week after the murder, an impromptu memorial of flowers and cards remains on Government Street near where Rice was killed. A woman who knows the Rice family dropped flowers off Wednesday, saying she was too upset to go to the funeral.

"Allie was everyone's daughter, everyone's sister, everyone's friend," her uncle Mike said at the funeral. "She loved to sing karaoke, especially, 'Tiny Dancer.' She was always happy."

Rice was studying marketing at LSU.

A moment of silence was held for Rice before the LSU football team's win over Mississippi State last Saturday night in Tiger Stadium.

"The Shed" barbecue restaurant in Baton Rouge, where Rice was working, has offered a $10,000 reward for any information that leads to her killer's conviction.

In recent months, two male students from nearby Southern University were shot to death. JoVonte Barber, 22, was killed near his vehicle in Baton Rouge in March, and Jyrion Dangerfield, 20, was found shot to death in July in his vehicle in Covington - 68 miles away. 

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Guilbeau joined OutKick as an SEC columnist in September of 2021 after covering LSU and the Saints for 17 years at USA TODAY Louisiana. He has been a national columnist/feature writer since the summer of 2022, covering college football, basketball and baseball with some NFL, NBA, MLB, TV and Movies and general assignment, including hot dog taste tests. A New Orleans native and Mizzou graduate, he has consistently won Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) and Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) awards since covering Alabama and Auburn at the Mobile Press-Register (1993-98) and LSU and the Saints at the Baton Rouge Advocate (1998-2004). In 2021, Guilbeau won an FWAA 1st for a game feature, placed in APSE Beat Writing, Breaking News and Explanatory, and won Beat Writer of the Year from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association (LSWA). He won an FWAA columnist 1st in 2017 and was FWAA's top overall winner in 2016 with 1st in game story, 2nd in columns, and features honorable mention. Guilbeau completed a book in 2022 about LSU's five-time national champion coach - "Everything Matters In Baseball: The Skip Bertman Story" - that is available at www.acadianhouse.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble outlets. He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife, the former Michelle Millhollon of Thibodaux who previously covered politics for the Baton Rouge Advocate and is a communications director.