Posted on 01/16/2015 3:41:25 AM PST by Altura Ct.
The night manager of a Drury Inn in St. Louis was shot to death during an early Thursday robbery attempt, one of the city’s seven homicides during a 24-hour span. Police quickly made three arrests in cases in which the victims reportedly knew their assailants.
Police Chief Sam Dotson and Mayor Francis Slay condemned the violence at a Thursday afternoon news conference. They did not identify the suspects in custody, who will be formally charged Friday.
Scott Knopfel, 50, was shot in the head at the Drury hotel near Interstate 44 just before 3 a.m. after he struggled with his assailant while opening a cash drawer. Surveillance video shows the suspect, whom the manager mistook for a patron, entering the hotel and leaving less than 30 seconds later. He can be seen pulling out a handgun and vaulting a counter, then leaving the hotel in the same manner.
Seven homicides within 24 hours is an unusually high number for St. Louis, which has a population of about 320,000 people and recorded 159 homicides in 2014. Dotson and Slay linked the overnight violence to crime increases in the area documented since the fatal Ferguson police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown more than five months ago in north St. Louis County.
“To see this much violence going on in our city within such a short period of time, it is absolutely outrageous,” Slay said. “It’s out of hand. It disgusts me.”
The first fatal shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday during a home invasion near Fountain Park. The city’s medical examiner’s office identified Leon Rivers, 34, as the victim, who was shot as he ran from the home. A 29-year-old man is in custody.
Shortly after midnight, a man was found shot in the hallway of an apartment complex in the Carondelet neighborhood. Police say Kenny Burgett, 19, was confronted by his girlfriend’s former boyfriend. The 22-year-old suspect challenged Burgett to a fist fight before shooting him, according to police.
Just eight minutes later, two men died after a shooting and robbery on a street in the Dutchtown neighborhood. The victims were identified as Eric Lee, 21, and Jerivon Taylor, 20.
A sixth homicide was reported around 8 a.m. Thursday, when Cheri Simpson, 32, was shot to death in her car just south of downtown St. Louis while waiting at a stoplight. Capt. Michael Sack said police have arrested the woman’s ex-boyfriend.
Dotson and Slay reiterated the need for more police officers in the city, amplifying calls for 160 new officers over two years in a plan that officials unveiled late last year, and lashed out at what they called light sentences handed down by judges in gun crimes.
“These acts of violence are intolerable,” said Dotson. “We cannot allow this in our community. Officers are taking it personally.”
Dotson also called for more gun control, telling reporters that it’s “too easy to get a gun and state law makes it too difficult to prosecute gun crimes.
“Criminals have been empowered,” he added. “Officers have been distracted.”
Details?? We know what that means.
As our country unravels I expect more of this; law has been replaced by brute force in a growing number of areas.
“Dotson also called for more gun control”
Yeah, that is the ticket. /s What an idiot.
This vaulting over the countertops, I have seen people do it on several robbery videos, ridiculous. I couldn’t even conceive vaulting a countertop on the best athletic day of my life and I am a healthy female. I have not seen a female vault the countertop, though, always a male. But it is a very scary act.
And just how many of these fine upstanding murderers legally owned their weapons, had permits, or had passed background checks to legally possess them? But once again, the fun grabbers will use the acts of criminals who obey no laws, to try to confiscate guns from the law-aviding. At this rate, all gun owners will be criminals. So be it. Our revolutionary forefathers were considered criminals by the British government too.
Profound. Well, at least as profound as his bleat for more gun control as a means of wallpapering over the real problem: a dysfunctional subset of the population that is apparently incapable of improved behavior.
Mr. niteowl77
Yeas ago when he owned a pawn shop, my stepson shot a thug who vaulted the counter to try to rob him.
None of whom, I would bet money, had followed even one little “gun law”. I would also bet most of the guns used in these crimes were stolen at one point or another.
Good, glad to hear it.
Yes, it’s never the fault of the thugs who pull the trigger, it’s those evil guns which put themselves into the thugs’ hands and somehow force them to pull the trigger. Funny how the good guns of law-abiding citizens don’t do that. They need to send those bad guns to prison.
Thank God that’s what the cops said too :)
Or any other law for that matter, if it is inconvenient or somehow uncool. It's only fair to force everyone else to adjust and suffer.
Mr. niteowl77
This is the main reason why I’m selling my home and moving to S.W. Missouri.
Urban skeet shooting!
Yes, but completely predictable. Reminds me of the Big Fat Greek Wedding movie where the guys universal remedy was Windex. For liberals ‘gun control’ and/or ‘climate change’ is the universal answer to ‘whats wrong’.
LOL
Unarmed VS Unarmed.
Why name the victims but not the perps?
When Liberals are flailing for "answers" to their policies, that is the one that always seems to come up despite all evidence to the contrary.
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