ST. LOUIS 鈥 The Rev. Larry Rice, the longtime pastor to the city鈥檚 homeless, said Wednesday that the two people shot near City Hall last week were homeless and struggling with their mental health.
And he told reporters at a news conference that their deaths should be a clarion call to state and local governments to do more for people living on the streets.
鈥淲ake up,鈥 he said.
Police say the incident last Friday morning at 14th and Market streets began when a man started chasing Sharone Spates, 29, of Ferguson, and then shot and fatally wounded Spates in front of a police officer. The officer then shot and killed the gunman, who has not yet been identified.
But at a press conference Wednesday, Rice said other homeless people have told him that the gunman, known on the street as 鈥淐owboy,鈥 had been threatening to take his own life for days before the incident. And Rice said someone should have helped him before he became violent and a police officer had to intervene.
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The city, he said, isn鈥檛 doing enough to help the homeless. He said the decision to fence off the area outside the old municipal courthouse, where homeless people had been camping and gathering for months, was unhelpful, not-in-my-backyard behavior.
狐狸视频 County is doing even less, he said. And the state needs to provide more money for services, too.
鈥淲e鈥檝e gone backwards in the last 75 years,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e have to reverse that course.鈥
His grandson, Chris Aaron Rice, said the city also needs to invite more people to help.
Larry Rice鈥檚 New Life Evangelistic Center is currently suing the city for preventing the reopening of its old homeless shelter on Locust Street downtown. The city shut down the shelter in 2017 after declaring the building unsafe, citing numerous code violations.
Conner Kerrigan, a spokesperson for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, agreed that the region needs to do more for the homeless. But he said that the administration is doing its part by spending money to expand shelter capacity and increase affordable housing, including 345 new homes authorized this year.
He said city case workers offered services to the people who gathered at the old municipal courthouse, and were often refused.
Jones is also working on getting other governments in the region to do more, Kerrigan said.