St Louis police have arrested a man who was allegedly captured in a graphic video shooting a man believed to be homeless in the head in broad daylight.
\nDeshawn Thomas, 23, was charged on Tuesday for the fatal shooting of David Saldana a day before, the St Louis Post Dispatch reports.
\n\u201cAny homicide is unnerving,\u201d Major Ryan Cousins of the St Louis police department told the paper, \u201cbut for this one to happen here, at this time, very much so.\u201d
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\nVideo allegedly shows Thomas stand over Saldana as he sits on a curb, load a pistol, then shoot the man.
\n\u201cOh my god. He just f***ing killed him,\u201d the individual filming the encounter can be heard saying.
\nPolice said Thomas fled the scene. Officers called for backup and arrested the man as he entered a branch of the St Louis public library. Officials say he was found with a gun and a bullet casing.
\nThe confrontation that led to Saldana\u2019s death allegedly began earlier in the day at a gas station, before spilling out into the street.
\nVideo of the incident quickly spread on social media, but was removed at times from Twitter due to its graphic nature.
\n“Twitter took down this video I posted yesterday so I\u2019ll post it again,” one of the accounts which shared the video said on social media, according to the\u2002Riverfront Times. “Doesn\u2019t show the murder on camera so stop censoring it.\u201d
\nMissouri\u2019s US Senator Josh Hawley used the incident to criticise Kim Gardner, the local circuit attorney for the city of St Louis.
\n\u201cKim Gardner must go,\u201d he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. \u201cProsecute the criminals\u201d
\nThe local official has been embroiled in controversy since an armed robbery suspect with several house arrest violations was behind the wheel in crash over earlier this month which forced a 17-year-old to suffer a double amputation.
\nAfter the crash, St Louis mayor Tishaura Jones said, “Some improvements need to be made in [Gardner\u2019s] office,\u201d according to KSDK.
\n“There are numerous attacks on our office,” Ms Gardner said in response. “There are numerous individuals that have an agenda to make sure that my office does not succeed.”
\n“We\u2019re going to fight very hard for justice in spite of the vitriol, the hate, the racist attacks, the known manipulation of the court procedures to make sure our office fails.”<\/p>\n
Independent<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aSt Louis Police, Homicide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
St Louis police have arrested a man who was allegedly captured in a graphic video shooting a man believed to be homeless in the head in broad daylight. Deshawn Thomas, 23, was charged on Tuesday for the fatal shooting of David Saldana a day before, the St Louis Post Dispatch reports. \u201cAny homicide is unnerving,\u201d Major Ryan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":6719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[2688,1350,2635],"class_list":["post-6718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-louis","tag-man","tag-st"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6720,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6718\/revisions\/6720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}