St. Louis Man Arrested For One Of At Least A Dozen Fatal Shootings Involving Children

September 3, 2019September 3, 20193 5626

A 54-year-old, Joseph Renick, faces charges of first-degree murder, armed criminal action and unlawful possession of a firearm. The St. Louis man was arrested Friday in connection with the death of 15-year-old Sentonio Cox, who is one of at least a dozen children 16 or younger killed by gun violence since April.

Police said officers responding to a missing person call arrived in the Carondelet neighborhood last weekend to find Sentonio dead from a gunshot wound to the head.

Cox was the latest in what was at the time at least 13 shootings of children in St. Louis under the age of 16.

Renick was being held on a $500,000 bond, according to the circuit attorney’s office.

A teenager who said he was a friend of the victim told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Sentonio was headed home when he was shot. According to the teen, Sentonio often took a shortcut through an empty lot near the site of the shooting.

Sentonio’s body was found less than 48 hours after another child, 8-year-old Jurnee Thompson, was shot and killed outside a preseason high school football game.

Renick is the second suspect arrested in the string of shootings. Police said a suspect was in custody in connection with the death of 7-year-old Xavier Usanga. The boy was fatally shot earlier this month while he and his sisters played in the backyard of their home in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The suspect has yet to be charged, authorities said.

Federal prosecutors said a St. Louis man facing an unrelated federal charge admitted to shooting Xavier. He has not been charged in Xavier’s death.

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Frustrated residents gathered for another vigil on Wednesday to remember the lives of the city’s young children killed in recent months. The names of the dead flashed across an electronic screen. A local lawmaker read them out loud.

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3 comments

Ron Mack September 3, 2019 at 4:45 pm

So sick of this SHIT!

Rebecca Gomez September 4, 2019 at 10:57 am

So fed up with this white supremacy B.S. going on in America and the senseless killings of children to prove a racist point and sooner than later those murderers will be caught, but it don’t help when there is a fake crook white nationalist in the fake whitehouse encouraging race hate

Richard Frederick Green September 7, 2019 at 5:22 am

I have an idea. Many of the stories i read about here never make it to the wider media. Maintains a false pride of the lie of equality it peddles across the world. Lets move the spot,light. Make every nasty, inhumane, vicious act front and center for the world to see in every paper and news outlet that will publish them. The world must know, Bring shame to those so called Christians as they gather in their churches on Sunday, offices on Monday, at lunch on Tuesday,, on their TV screens as they watch their actions be paraded before the world. Media companies squash stories. Create networks with others in other countries spread notice of their crimes.
Totalitarian governments cut internet service to keep news from spreading. We are at the Hub of the information Super Highway. Shame them at the top of your LUNGS!