In 2018, a heartbroken mother named Donnita Stunson sent a letter to St. Louis' mayor asking for help. “I was born and raised in the city of St. Louis,” she wrote. “I was once proud of my city, until Dec. 22, 2017.” On that date, people with guns broke into the apartment that Stunson’s daughter Dominique Lewis had moved into. Lewis and two friends ran outside in their bedclothes looking for somewhere to hide and jumped into the back seat of one of their cars. The shooters found them and repeatedly fired into the vehicle, killing all three women. Three months later, Stunson was desperate for updates on the investigation, but detectives weren’t returning her calls. Police said the women appeared to have been targeted for unknown reasons. Of the 1,900 homicides in St. Louis from 2014 through 2023, more than 1,000 remain unsolved, according to an analysis of homicide data obtained by APM Reports and St. Louis Public Radio. In those years, murders in St. Louis surged, making the city one of the nation’s deadliest.
The city’s homicides, especially those that remain unsolved, tend to happen in geographic clusters. In the Fairground neighborhood on the city’s north side, where the three women were slain, the concentration of deadly shootings is staggering. There were at least 37 homicides in the area in the past decade, and nearly 60% remain unsolved. In high-crime neighborhoods like this one, talking to police can be dangerous. After the triple homicide, police appealed to the public for tips. The families went public, holding vigils and begging for someone to come forward with information. Over the years, the nonprofit CrimeStoppers repeatedly offered reward money, but police never arrested any suspects. Some experts contend that failing to solve homicides can lead to more violence. “If you’re not closing cases, then people are afraid,” said Dan Isom, a former St. Louis police commissioner who served as the city’s public safety director from 2021 to 2023. “There is a lot of correlation, if not causation, between confidence in the police and community violence,” Isom said. Without an arrest, some people might seek justice on their own.