Individual Details

Detroit News, Detroit, Michigan, Thursday, April 7, 1994, Page 27, Col. 2-5: Cops Seek Warrants As Victim Is Laid to Rest. The way Elwin Lillie's family see it, 30 seconds would have kept the 54-year-old from his grave. Lillie had stopped for lunch at a McDonald's restaurant while on his way to pick up his mother from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, but he never made it.

On Wednesday, more than 400 people attended the Evart man's funeral in Greenville. "He would not have been killed if he hadn't stopped," said Lillie's brother, Jack. "If it had been 30 seconds more he would have been out on the road and gone."

[Two paragraphs are left out as they detail the warrants issued for two men for Mr. Lillie's murder].

"It's incomprehensible this would happen to this kind of man," said Mark Olson, director of Spring Hill Camps, an interdenominational Christian youth camp in Evart that's focused on kids. Lillie was the construction supervisor at the 723 acre camp. "He will be missed terribly, said Olson.

Police say Lillie was sitting in his 1989 Buick Century about 2 p.m. Saturday in the parking lot of McDonald's restaurant on Middle belt Road, near the airport, and was getting ready to leave to meet his mother's 2:15 p.m. flight from Florida.

But a Ford Escort with two men inside backed into the parking space next to his car. One man jumped out and pushed a sawed-off shotgun into Lillis' face and demanded his money, police said. When Lillie tried to drive away, the man shot him in the head.
Lillie's Buick hit a wall of the restaurant, rolled back and crashed into the Escort, disabling it. The two men jumped out of the car, ran north on Middle Belt to a nearby Amoco station and stole a red 1992 Pontiac Grand Prix from a woman who was pumping gas. The two escaped east on I-94. "They were looking for a victim and he was it," said Sgt. Dan Snyder, "He didn't do anything."

Lillie's wife and two children feared the worst when his mother Maion,80, called from the airport at 4 p.m. asking why he son hadn't picked her up yet, said Jack Lillie. Their fears were realized when police called later that day. "He was just a lovable man," Jack Lillie said, "He would do anything for anybody."

Birth	4 Oct 1939	Greenville, Moncalm Co., Michigan
Marriage	14 Sep 1968	Holdrege, Phelps Co., Nebraska - Judy Deloris Musil
Death	2 Apr 1994	Detroit, Wayne Co., Michigan
Burial		Forest Home Cemetery, Greenville, Montcalm Co., Michigan

Spouse	Judy Deloris Musil (1945 - )
Child	Bart David Lillie (1971 - )
Child	Brian Edward Lillie (1974 - )