Michael Costello didn’t want Andrew Ameer to be forgotten, as if he were just another statistic.
That’s why he emailed me in late September, just a couple of nights after Ameer was shot and killed. Costello is an associate professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, and Ameer, 27, had been one of his students.
Ameer died the night of Sept. 27. He was found with his car, which he used to make money as a Lyft driver, along with a 16-year-old, in the Baden neighborhood of north St. Louis. Both had been shot and would be declared dead at a hospital. A 15-year-old is in custody, St. Louis police say, related to the shooting.
Here was the opening sentence to the story written by reporter Kim Bell in the Post-Dispatch the next day:
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“A violent Sunday pushed St. Louis to the highest number of homicides the city has seen since 1994.â€
Ameer was homicide victim No. 206, or maybe 205 depending on what time he died. The number of homicide victims in the city has since risen to 220, as of Friday morning. At this time last year, the city had recorded 168 homicides.
Sadly, most die in virtual anonymity, at least outside friends and family. Sometimes the child victims earn a couple of days of headlines and cries from public officials about how this has to end. We remember Kayden and Kennedi, at least for a time, but so many of the other victims, nearly all of them Black, are just numbers on a rising tally.
I’ve written before about former St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom’s solution to this problem. Until we care about every homicide victim in the city — and “not just the good kids,†Isom says — the city will continue to fight an uphill battle. A lot of people cared about Andrew Ameer.
“He was very reliable,†says his mother, Rochelle, a widow who has raised seven children on her own in north St. Louis County. has collected $13,000, with a goal of $20,000, to help her through this tragedy. She’s a registered nurse and was at the hospital when she got the call that her son had been shot. “He had a positive attitude,†Rochelle says about Andrew. “He loved life and trying new things. He enjoyed school.â€
Indeed, he did, said Costello: “He was a hardworking, bright, articulate young man for whom I had high expectations.â€
Ameer was studying business and working toward a doctorate in psychology. He grew up in north St. Louis County. Ameer was homeschooled through high school, then he got his G.E.D., went to St. Louis Community College at Meramec, and worked for the student newspaper before transferring to UMSL. His untimely death shocked his fellow students, professors, and family members.
“This is a loss that is unexplainable and incomprehensible,†says Shannon Keys, who took business classes with Ameer. Indeed, that’s the case with many homicides in the city.
Rochelle sees a common thread in the violence that is all-too-common in the city, and in parts of north St. Louis County. Too many guns.
“If I could do one thing to make our community safer it would be to destroy all guns,†Rochelle says, “but that isn’t reality is it?â€
There was a time after a spike in homicides in St. Louis — several times, actually, over decades — that among the public responses to a rising death toll would be calls to do something, anything, about the number of guns on the streets. Mayors and police chiefs and prosecutors would urge the Missouri Legislature to pass laws. There would be gun buybacks and education programs. Some of them might have even made an impact. Those days seem all but gone in Missouri, where even after mass shootings the Legislature tends to move to make it more likely that there are more guns out there, not fewer.
That’s a tragedy, says a mother mourning the death of her son. “There are too many illegal guns out there and they are in the hands of minors,†Rochelle says. “If guns are going to be owned and out there, we need more education. I know many people are against guns, but they’re not going away.â€