Teenager shot dead by St Louis drug detectives

Police said Darryl Ross, 16, had reached for a gun after being chased by two narcotics detectives

The Shell gas station where Darryl Ross, 16, was shot by police on Sunday 11 Sep 2022 (David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)

A Black teenager has been shot dead by drug enforcement detectives in St Louis.

The St Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) said in a statement on Monday that Darryl Ross, 16, had died in hospital after being shot by two of its drug enforcement detectives.

It said that Ross had attempted to reach for a gun that he had been carrying after tripping and falling over while being pursued by the detectives near a gas station in the Old North St Louis neighbourhood.

Members of Ross’s family told local broadcasters that the teenager had never pulled out his gun and that the officers did not announce themselves as police.

In its statement, the SLMPD said that the two detectives, one Black and one white, had been surveilling a group of people armed with guns near a Shell gas station at 2800 North Florissant Ave.

It said the detectives were in plain clothes and using an unmarked undercover vehicle, but wearing black ballistic vests with “POLICE” written on them in white letters on both front and back.

When the detectives approached, it said, one of the people under surveillance – later identified as Ross – “quickly walked off the gas station lot” and into an alleyway.

“The Detectives followed the subject into the alley and exited their vehicle, announcing themselves as police officers,” said the SLMPD. “The subject ran through an opening in an iron fence west across the gas station store front with the officers in foot pursuit.

“As the subject continued to run, he tripped over a curb and fell to the sidewalk dropping a pistol. As the detectives approached the subject, he reached for the pistol. Both Officer #1 and #2 fired their weapons at the subject, striking him.”

Both officers were then said to have given first aid, before an ambulance came to take Ross to hospital, where he died.

At a weekly briefing on Monday, the force’s interim public safety director Dan Isom said the officers did not wear body cameras, according to The St Louis Post-Dispatch.

Mr Isom said the shooting is being investigated by the SLMPD’s newly-established Force Investigation Unit, but declined to offer any more details. Employees at the gas station, which has at least six surveillance cameras, declined to speak to the Dispatch.

Ross’s family disputed the SLMPD’s account of events. They said that the detectives had never announced themselves and that their ballistic vests might not have been visible in the dark.

They acknowledged that he was carrying a gun, but said he had never pulled it out.

“Why are they funding them to wear body cameras and they’re not wearing them?” said Ross’s grandfather Randy Johnson. “We taxpayers pay for body cameras, but they don’t have to wear them.”