Police say the victims were all related and were found across three crime scenes in East St. Louis.
Two teenagers are in custody in connection with a shooting that killed five members of the same family and left two others hospitalized in East St. Louis, Illinois, over the weekend.
Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said the attack unfolded at three separate locations across the city Sunday and that at least one of the suspects is related to at least one of the victims. Authorities have not disclosed the exact relationship. The suspects were taken into custody at Frank Holten State Park, an area east of the city, and had not been formally charged as of Sunday evening. State police said they are seeking charges through the St. Clair County State’s Attorney’s Office.
According to Kelly, one person was shot and killed at the intersection of 39th Street and Summit Avenue. Three more were killed at the Samuel Gompers Homes, a housing development in the 400 block of North 6th Street. A third scene unfolded at Jones Park, where one person was killed and two others were wounded. The two survivors were taken to a hospital across the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri, in serious condition.
State police identified the five people killed as Cherie L. May, 49; Devin D. May, 24; Patricia A. May, 74; Quentin L. Thompson, 21; and Shania W. Thompson, 25. All of the victims were from East St. Louis, and authorities said the entire group of seven who were shot were related to one another.
Kelly called the case a targeted mass shooting against a single family and said such an event is rare, though he noted East St. Louis has seen similar violence in past decades. He declined to say how many weapons were recovered or how the teenage suspects may have obtained firearms. He also said investigators had not yet established a motive but that the picture was “coming together.”
“These alleged acts of horrific violence, taking this number of lives here in this community, it’s terrible, it’s evil, but it will not keep this city down,” Kelly said.
No members of the public were harmed in the shootings, and Kelly said there is no ongoing threat to the community. He said some of the killings may have occurred before Sunday morning, though most took place primarily that day. The investigation began after East St. Louis police received an initial call to look into a report of human remains, which led investigators to at least one of the scenes.
The case fits a pattern criminologists have called family annihilation, in which multiple members of a household are killed by someone close to them. A 2023 investigation by the Indianapolis Star found these attacks occur across the United States roughly every five days on average.
The shooting marked at least the twelfth mass murder recorded in the United States so far this year, according to the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass murder as an incident with four or more people killed. The archive also recorded more than 240 mass shootings nationwide through Monday, a category that includes incidents in which four or more people are wounded or killed.
East St. Louis sits on the Illinois side of the state line with Missouri. Illinois has some of the stricter state gun laws in the country, including a requirement that buyers hold a firearm owner’s identification card. Missouri does not require a permit or license to buy or carry a firearm and does not regulate private firearm transfers or storage, though the state does bar the sale of handguns, shotguns or rifles to minors without parental consent.
