ST. LOUIS — Two drug enforcement detectives shot and killed a teenager Sunday night in the city's Old North St. Louis neighborhood.
Darryl Ross, 16, of St. Louis, died at a hospital after he was shot Sunday night near the Shell gas station at North Florissant and St. Louis avenues. Ross lived in the Baden neighborhood of far north St. Louis, just south of Bellefontaine Neighbors.
The officers were near the Shell gas station when they said they saw several people with guns just after 11:30 p.m., according to a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department incident report.
The officers notified other detectives, then drove into the gas station's parking lot. ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ were in an undercover vehicle and dressed in plain clothes but were wearing black, bulletproof vests with the word “POLICE†in white letters on the front and back.
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One of the armed men, later identified as Ross, "quickly walked off" the gas station lot and into a nearby alley, according to the report.Â
The two officers followed Ross in their vehicle into the alley, police said, then exited the car while identifying themselves as police to Ross.
Ross went through a hole in an iron fence and then ran west across the gas station's storefront, police said. The detectives ran after him.Â
Police said as the chase continued, the teenager tripped over a curb, fell and dropped a pistol.
As the detectives approached him, they said Ross reached for the gun and both detectives shot him.Â
Ross died at a hospital.Â
Neither officer was injured, police said. The department said they were in the area Sunday night working the Summer Violence Initiative.
One of the officers is 37 years old and has been with the department for 14 years. The other is 27 years old and has been with the department for four years.Â
Interim Public Safety Director Dan Isom said at a weekly briefing Monday that the shooting remains under investigation by the department's Force Investigation Unit and that he could not share further information, including how many times officers fired their guns and whether they suspected the teen of a crime when they first approached him.Â
Isom said the undercover officers were not wearing body cameras. At least six surveillance cameras are posted on the outside of the Shell building, but the station's employees told the Post-Dispatch that officers instructed them not to talk to anyone about the shooting.
Broken crime scene tape could be seen along West Florissant on Monday morning, and one of the police department's mobile shot spotter units with surveillance cameras is stationed across the street on St. Louis Avenue.
Ross' family gathered at the scene of the shooting Monday afternoon to dispute police's narrative of the incident.Â
This is the department's second fatal shooting within a week and at least the fifth this year.
St. Louis officers shot and killed a 61-year-old man during an hourslong standoff Wednesday afternoon at a West End apartment complex. A police commander said that man charged at an officer with a knife, and the officer shot him at least once in the chest. About seven shots were fired by officers.Â
Post-Dispatch photographer David Carson and editor Alex Valentine contributed to this report.