By MOLLY DRYMAN

Staff Reporter

RESERVE — A local business owner and his family were robbed for the second time in six months.

Lasseigne Metal Buildings owner Jimmy Lasseigne said he doesn’t understand why this keeps happening.

“I was robbed earlier this year on Jan. 16,” he said. “I wasn’t home at the time of the robbery, but they took everything. They had to be in my house at least four hours.”

Lasseigne said the two men came in his house around 3 a.m., Tuesday morning.

According to Lasseigne, the two men were African-American, one light-skinned, wearing all black with bandannas and hats.

“They came into my bedroom while I was sleeping with a 12-inch garden hoe and beat me in the arm with it,” he said. “It was the kind with four prongs on one end and a hoe on the other. They held me and my wife at gun point and kept asking me where my money was.”

Lasseigne told the men where the money was and then the two men used a cell phone cord and a clock cord to tie him and his wife up before they left.

“I never even heard a door shut or anything,” he said. “My son was in his bedroom on the other end of the house and never heard a thing. My dog didn’t even wake up. I got my shot-gun out of the closet and went looking through the house, but I didn’t see where they had came in.”

Lasseigne said he called 911 and they showed up quickly and assumed the men came in through the garage.

“We leave the garage open a little for the cat to go in and out,” he said. “They had to have lifted the garage as much as they could, then placed a brick there to keep it open and slid under the door. They opened the door in the garage to the house with something like a credit card.”

The deputy found no evidence of a forced entry and therefore could not gather information for further investigation.

Public Information Officer Maj. Mike Tregre of the St. John Parish Sheriff’s Office said Jimmy’s wife’s purse and son’s wallet were found in the garage with nothing removed from it.