via St. Louis Regional Crimestoppers
Robert Lovings Polk was found dead almost two weeks after his family reported him missing.
First, the news broke that Robert Polk, an Army veteran and former Hazelwood East football star, was missing after going to buy a car he’d found on Craigslist.
Then, a demolition crew working in St. Louis’ Baden neighborhood found a decomposing body that, if foul play was involved, would be the 159th homicide in the city of St. Louis in 2015—tying the total number of homicides from all of 2014 with more than two months left in the year.
These two tragic stories converged Thursday when police identified the found body as Polk on Thursday. Tests showed he’d been shot, police told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“It hurts so bad,” Polk’s grandmother, Dorothy Polk, age 71, told the Post. “I knew it was him when they said on the news that they found a body.”
Before the workers found Polk, family members told media outlets he’d saved money by working jobs through a temp agency to buy a car. When he finally found the car he wanted, a black Mustang, on Craigslist, he left around 7 p.m. on October 3 to buy it and never returned, they said.
“I'm thinking he met up with the wrong person,” Hayleen Jones, Polk’s mother, told KTVI.
One of the workers who found Polk told the Post there was a blood trail leading to his body, which was hidden face down beneath a piece of drywall. Nearby, in the street, were gun shell casings.
“It was more hurtful than anything, seeing someone’s lifeless body lying there,” said Daniel Parker, age 29, to the Post.
Police called homicide detectives to the 8000 block of Frederick Street around 8 a.m. Thursday and identified the body as Polk that afternoon.
And with more than two months left in the year, St. Louis seems destined to surpass last year's homicide total in 2015.
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
