Slain Grocery Owner Is Mourned : Violence: Relatives gather at home of Jyotasna Prajapati, 29, who was shot in robbery at her Van Nuys store.

Jyotasna Prajapati was a devoted mother and hard worker, taking her infant daughter with her as she put in 13-hour days at the small grocery she and her husband bought in Van Nuys after she emigrated from India.

So the 2-year-old was in the back room when a robber casually shot her mother to death for challenging his right to walk out with a free 12-pack of beer.

Relatives gathered Wednesday at her home to mourn the senseless killing.

“My sister is gone,” Shashibala Prajapati, the victim’s older sister, said between sobs. “I don’t know why anyone would want to kill her.”

Prajapati, 29, was killed about 6 p.m. when two men took a 12-pack from a cooler at the Top Produce Market in the 7400 block of Van Nuys Boulevard and began to leave without paying, said Detective Stephen Fisk of the Los Angeles Police Department.

When she tried to stop them, one of the thieves turned and shot her in the head with a large caliber pistol, Fisk said.

Her young daughter, Atithi, who was asleep at the store during the robbery, was unharmed and found crying in the store later, police said.

“She doesn’t know about her mother,” said Prajapati’s cousin, who did not identify herself. “It is too hard to explain to her.”

Family members said Prajapati’s husband had just left his wife and daughter at the store an hour before the shooting to help his brother-in-law run some errands. He returned to the store to find the police investigating his wife’s death.

Prajapati’s three grown sisters and brother went to the woman’s small Panorama City home Wednesday to comfort her grieving husband, who had locked himself in the bedroom and was unable to talk with anyone.

The couple married in 1992 and bought the small grocery store a year later, family members said. They had no other employees, and would work from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., bringing their daughter to the store, first in a baby basket, and later in a stroller, they said.

Prajapati emigrated to California from her native Gujarat, India, about seven years ago. She planned to return to visit her parents this December, they said.

Her sisters, who all own similar small markets around the San Fernando Valley, said nothing so violent had ever happened to any of them.

“We never had problems with anybody,” said Shashibala Prajapati. “That’s why we thought she was safe to stay there alone.”

On Wednesday, Prajapati’s customers placed flowers at the market’s front door to honor her memory.

“I remember when their baby was just born and they would bring her into the store,” said Ralph Reed, who lives around the corner from the store. “She was always really nice, and if you didn’t have any money, she would give you things on credit.”

“I just can’t believe it. This was the only place I would come to get beer because it was cheap,” he said.

Teen-agers who came to the store after school were shocked to learn of the grocer’s death.

“She was cool,” 14-year-old Ludwig Hernandez said. “She would always let us slide if we didn’t have enough money.”

Angelica Moreno, manager of Tacos Mexico in the same mini-mall as the market, said she was working Tuesday night and was surprised when an employee she sent to Prajapati’s store to buy sodas “came running back and said there was a dead body over there.”

She heard no shot, Moreno said, but when “we ran over there . . . she was already dead with a lot of blood around her.”

No weapon was found. Witnesses described the killers as two Latino men, 18 to 22, Fisk said. The witnesses spotted the two fleeing in a late-model black Chevrolet, either a Camaro or a Beretta, he said.