ST. LOUIS (AP) - Family members are searching for answers after a shooting spree left three people dead and one person wounded last month at two separate St. Louis locations.
Police began investigating March 27 after a 21-year-old woman managed to call police after she was shot in the head, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (https://bit.ly/1yNpqQt ) reports. Inside a boarding house, officers found the wounded woman lying on a bed with a cellphone beside her. The unidentified woman’s roommate, James Lacey, 47, and her friend, Paige Schaefer, 23, sat dead in their chairs, shot in the head at close range.
About an hour later, police found Schaefer’s mother, 54-year Tammie Thurmond, lying next to a trash bin in an alley about 20 blocks away. She also had been shot in the head and died two days later in a hospital without ever regaining consciousness.
Police determined the same gun had been used to shoot all four. No arrests have been made.
“They were all very beautiful people who made dangerous and bad choices,” said Lorrie Chacin, whose sister, Thurmond, and niece, Schaefer, were among those killed. “But they didn’t deserve this.”
Chacin, 50, of Lemay, said Thurmond had struggled over the years with homelessness and drugs. But she recently had moved back in with a former boyfriend, and Chacin went to see her the day before the killings. Thurmond’s new place was about five blocks from Lacey’s home.
Family and friends of the victims are unsure about how the group met, but all believe Lacey let Schaefer and the surviving victim move in because they had nowhere else to go.
“Jimmy was trying to help them out and keep them from the streets,” Chacin said.
Lacey’s ex-wife, Amy Rae Yard, of Los Angeles, said she had let Lacey book a flight for April 12 so he could see his 17-year-old son for the first time in 10 years. They were going to meet in Las Vegas. Yard said her ex-husband “wanted to make amends with me and be right by his son.”
Along with their discussions about a reunion, Lacey told Yard that a 21-year-old woman had moved in with him. Chacin said the woman is expected to survive but with possible lifelong medical challenges.
“We’re terrified because we don’t know who did this,” Chacin said. “When people say, ’I want closure,’ I totally get that now. It’s not going to change the outcome. We still lost them, but I want to know how, and I want to know why.”
___
Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, https://www.stltoday.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.