Raising Cane’s manager, 21, dies after stabbing

Kenner Police Chief Michael Glaser said deputies believe Joshua Every, the 23-year-old suspect in the killing of a Raising Cane’s manager early Wednesday, was a former employee at the restaurant.

Every was identified as a suspect by other employees who recognized him, Glaser said.

The chief said that surveillance footage captured the entire robbery. Detectives believe that as 21-year-old Taylor Friloux and another employee exited the rear of the store to dispose of trash, Every and another man approached her with a knife.

Friloux was stabbed once outside the restaurant, then forced inside to open a safe, Glaser said. Investigators believe that on his way out of the restaurant, Every stabbed Friloux several more times.

Both robbers then ran outside and jumped into a waiting car, Glaser said.

“No one’s going to be able to convince me that the motive was just pure robbery when you stab a 21-year-old girl,” Glaser said.

Family says Joshua Every is a ‘sweet child’

Kenner police officers and St. John the Baptist Parish sheriff’s deputies went in and out of Every’s home in LaPlace throughout the morning gathering evidence and interviewing family members.

Confusion and fear could still be read on the face of Every’s aunt, Stephanie Williams, when she opened the door to a reporter.

Williams said the family did not know why Every had been arrested and professed shock when told about the fatal armed robbery in Kenner.

“He was here last night. We got text messages to prove it,” Williams said.

Williams also said she had heard that an SUV was used in the stick-up at the fast food restaurant, not the sedan that Every drove.

“He’s a sweet child,” Williams said of her nephew. She said he helped around the house by baby-sitting smaller children and fixing computers.

One neighbor, who declined to be named, agreed that Every was a “nice boy.” But the rest of Every’s family, she added, was a frequent source of trouble on an otherwise quiet suburban street that looks out onto a golf course. It was just about two years ago, she said, when deputies and U.S. marshals descended onto the street to arrest another one of Every’s family members in an unrelated case.

Pointing to a piece of half-eaten toast, the woman recounted how she woke up on Wednesday morning to the alarming sight of armed law enforcement officers descending on the Every family’s house through her backyard.

“Our neighborhood was perfect for years. It’s been perfect. Beautiful, wonderful people here,” the woman said.

“This,” said the woman, referring to her neighbors, “is the only drawback.”

Joshua Every linked to another crime in Kenner

Wednesday was not the first time Every had been linked to a crime at a business in Kenner.

He and two other people were charged with trying to break into a Game Stop video game and electronics store in the 800 block of West Esplanade Avenue in November 2012. Every and his companions that day partially forced their way through the store’s back door, which was closed at the time; but a sturdy bar blocked them from being able to completely enter, the store’s former manager recalled Wednesday.

After police showed up to the store, the would-be burglars began fleeing, ex-manager Wilfredo Salazar said. But an officer managed to nab one, and that person “ratted out” the others before they were caught as well, Salazar said.

Salazar said he believed the intruders were in search of a video game that had not yet been released to the general public when they tried to commit the only break-in the ex-manager remembers at one of his stores during a nearly two-decade career in software retail.

The case ended in January 2014 when Every pleaded guilty as a first offender to one count of attempted unauthorized entry of a business as well as resisting an officer, and he received two years of active probation from 24th Judicial District Court Judge Nancy Miller, records show. In March, after completing the probation, he was given what is known as an automatic first offender pardon, which gave back certain basic rights to Every, such as the right to vote, records show.

Salazar said it unnerved him to learn that Every was now a suspect in the slaying of a store manager.

“I feel bad for that girl,” Salazar said. “It’s terrible.”

Meanwhile, Raising Cane’s spokeswoman Julie Perrault said the restaurant in Kenner would be closed as the company focused on the welfare of its employees and cooperated with the police investigation.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of” Friloux, Perrault said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Taylor’s family.”

Neighbors say stabbing victim a ‘driven young woman’

No one was home at Friloux’s family residence in LaPlace, two miles away from where Every’s place. But neighbors described Friloux as a hard-working, driven young woman who always had a smile.

“She just stayed focused on whatever she was doing,” said neighbor Holly Detillier, 27. “She was just herself. She didn’t have to impress nobody.”

Craig Gommel, 58, said he drove Friloux to Archbishop Chapelle High School in Metairie every morning when she was a freshman there and his daughter was a senior.

The shock was still on his face just minutes after he got news on Wednesday of her violent death. Gommel remembered a “little bitty thing” who was a “super, super sweet little girl” when he drove her to high school, where Friloux’s name regularly appeared on the honor roll.

Friloux was also an honors student in elementary school at St. Christopher in Metairie, where she was on an award-winning cheerleading squad.

“It’s unbelievable,” Gommel said. “Look, if you want to rob, if you know the store, you don’t have to go this far. It’s just not right.”

To read the rest of this story, visit The New Orleans Advocate’s website.

This story was originally published June 29, 2016 at 4:17 PM with the headline "Raising Cane’s manager, 21, dies after stabbing."