Man kills suspected carjacker at St. Louis gas station in latest deadly car-theft attempt

ST. LOUIS — A gas station customer fatally shot a man who was trying to steal his car just after 6 a.m. Wednesday, police said, the man told them.

The 48-year-old was a customer at a Zoom Gulf station on Tucker Boulevard, just north of downtown. He shot the suspected thief once in the chest, in his 20s, police said. The man ran away but collapsed a block away and died.

Police said both men had guns and warned local residents not to fight an attacker.

“I would strongly encourage you to flee the situation as soon as possible,” Police Captain Pierre Benoist later said. “But when you’re in a situation like this where you have to defend yourself, you have to defend yourself. And from what I learned this morning, that is the case.”

Wednesday’s shooting was the latest example of victims in the St. Louis area violently confronting suspects as auto thefts skyrocketed last year.

St. Louis prosecutors charged Brett M. Kress, 26, with involuntary manslaughter after authorities said Kress shot and killed a man who was trying to steal his car in Soulard on Jan. 7. The confrontation took place at a Conoco gas station, 1314 Gravois Avenue. Surveillance video showed suspected robber Jesse Lopez trying to run away; Kress shot him three times, police said.

A woman tracked down her stolen car and killed two men outside a Speedie gas station near North Broadway Street and Riverview Boulevard on December 21, police said.

And on October 31, two boys, ages 14 and 16, were shot and killed after stealing a woman’s car in north St. Louis. The boys were among five youths who took the woman’s car from the 10000 block of Lookaway Drive in the city’s Riverview neighborhood, police said. The woman and other witnesses tracked the car to Flordell Hills, and police said two of the boys were shot while they were in the back seat of a Kia. The police did not say who fired the shots.

St. Louis Police Sgt. Charles Wall said the city has reported 21 carjackings so far this year, down one from the same time last year. The city has had 978 auto thefts this year, Wall said, compared to 428 auto thefts this time last year — a 129% increase.

The wave of thefts peaked last summer, receded at the end of last year and picked up again in recent weeks. Benoist said Wednesday that 138 car thefts were reported in the last week.

St. Louis was among 30 cities in the United States named in a January crime report by the Council on Criminal Justice. The council examined vehicle thefts from 2019, before the pandemic began, through the end of 2022. St. Louis saw a 109% increase in auto thefts during that period, the eighth-highest; the average increase during those months in the 30 cities was 59%. Only one of the cities, Baltimore, reported a drop.

The report went on to say that two patterns emerged. Some cities, such as Denver and Milwaukee, saw a surge and then a decline in the early months of the pandemic. The second pattern was observed in St. Louis, Chicago, Memphis, and a few other cities. For them, vehicle thefts didn’t increase much in the early days of the pandemic, but “climbed steeply” in 2022. Much of last year’s surge in St. Louis was attributed to a viral TikTok video that showed how to break into and drive off some models of Kias and Hyundais using just a screwdriver and a USB charging cable.

Benoist said a task force operates in the city and sometimes Night Watch officers look out for downtown and midtown car thieves. He said police posted flyers at gas pumps, mostly in south St. Louis, to warn motorists to be aware of their surroundings. Police have parked portable video surveillance equipment called SkyCop outside some train stations to deter theft.

Several St. Louis County police departments, as well as the FBI, have also established a task force. In O’Fallon, Missouri, police were chasing a stolen car whose occupants are suspected of attempting to break into vehicles at an apartment complex around 12:40 a.m. Wednesday. The pursuit ended with the suspects crashing into utility poles in Kirkwood, moderately injuring two 16-year-old boys.

On Wednesday at the Zoom gas station in North Tucker, crime scene tape was extended to O’Fallon Street east of Tucker, where police set up a screen to block the view of the dead suspect.

On the gas station premises, an evidence marker was located near a white four-door sedan parked near the gas pumps.

Benoist, the police captain, said he didn’t know whether the car’s owner was in his car or not when he shot the suspect.

Homicide detectives are continuing to investigate, police said, and are removing video surveillance from the gas station.