{"id":62393,"date":"2020-12-03T15:54:59","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T21:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=62393"},"modified":"2020-12-03T15:54:59","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T21:54:59","slug":"62393","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=62393","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Interstate shootings don\u2019t surprise police, who say streets are flooded with guns<\/a><\/p>\n

ST. LOUIS \u2013 Two interstate shootings Monday have people wondering if they\u2019re safe anywhere. But they are just the beginning of the violence police say they\u2019re seeing every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe streets are absolutely flooded with stolen guns,\u201d Maryland Heights Police Chief Bill Carson said.<\/p>\n

The chief said many of them are coming from legal gun owners who are carrying them in their cars. Carson said it\u2019s so prevalent now that criminals are confident they\u2019ll find a gun when breaking into a car. He said the criminals are \u201clooking specifically for guns. They\u2019re finding guns and a lot of times when we encounter them, they are armed with guns they\u2019ve stolen out of cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carson said criminals are targeting parking lots in the city and the suburbs, from hotels to shopping centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey might hit an apartment parking lot and hit 15-20 cars and come up with three guns,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re hitting the jackpot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police are still investigating the two interstate shootings. The first happened in the middle of the day \u2013 at about 3 p.m. on I-170 near Olive. From Bommarito Automotive Skyfox you could see multiple shell casings marked by police and a SUV with bullet holes in the driver\u2019s side. Forty-six-year-old Kristen Whittedwas shot and killed.<\/p>\n

Four hours later, St. Louis police reported a second interstate shooting at about 7 p.m. near I-55 and Germania. An incident report says \u201can unknown black sedan pulled next to (the victim) on the exit ramp and fired a shot into his vehicle. The victim is stable. The investigation is ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though we don\u2019t know the source of the guns from these incidents yet, Chief Carson said they\u2019re finding many crimes tied to stolen guns. Last June, Maryland Heights police were undercover in a car break-in sting when a 17-year-old suspect who was checking car door handles shot an officer who confronted him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt becomes more dangerous for the police officers because they are finding more and more people breaking into cars that are armed with handguns,\u201d Carson said.<\/p>\n

He added that it\u2019s a vicious cycle. He said when violence spikes, law-abiding citizens buy guns, and then criminals steal them from cars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interstate shootings don\u2019t surprise police, who say streets are flooded with guns ST. LOUIS \u2013 Two interstate shootings Monday have people wondering if they\u2019re safe anywhere. But they are just the beginning of the violence police say they\u2019re seeing every day. \u201cThe streets are absolutely flooded with stolen guns,\u201d Maryland Heights Police Chief Bill Carson … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-law-order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62394,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62393\/revisions\/62394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}