A fatal shooting last week at St. Louis Lambert International Airport has put a bright light on the persistent issue of homelessness at the airport, with a source familiar with its operations telling SLM that airport police make daily contact with people using Lambert as an ad hoc shelter.
The shooting happened in the early hours Friday on the upper level of Terminal 1, with the Post-Dispatch reporting the victim was not a traveller but someone who had come into the airport to use the bathroom. After refusing to leave, the man brandished a knife at airport police officers, who tased and then fatally shot him. The victim’s identity has not yet been made public.
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A source familiar with airport operations describes the victim as a homeless individual and says that it is not at all uncommon for airport police to have encounters with unhoused people, especially late at night at Lambert.
That same source says that the airport police conduct nightly “sweeps” of the terminals prior to the departure of the day’s final MetroLink train, which happens most nights a little before 1 a.m. Officers corral anyone attempting to spend the night there to leave via public transit. During winter, this could be as many as two or three dozen people. The shooting last week happened between midnight and 1 a.m., the source says.
Lambert spokesman Roger Lotz quibbled with the term “sweeps” to describe the officers’ actions, but did not provide further information by press time.
It is in many ways no surprise Lambert, or any airport, would have this issue, as businesses of all types have contended with homeless people finding shelter, warmth, or even just a bathroom inside their spaces. However, unlike a Starbucks cafe, Lambert is several hundred thousand square feet and maintains its own police force of nearly 50 officers.
Wanda Miller is a retired AT&T employee who drives for Uber, which frequently has her making runs to Lambert late at night. She says there is a consistent presence of people without apparent housing around the airport, especially around the Interstate 70 exit near the Terminal 1 entrance.
“When I saw it hit the news, I knew it was one of the unhoused people,” Miller said of the recent shooting. She said some of the people panhandle at that highway exit then they go over to the nearby BP for cigarettes or liquor. Of the airport itself, she says, “They use it as a place to get warm and to charge their phone.” Miller says that when she’s at the BP, she at times buys food for the people asking for money and lends them her ear: “It’s the same ones pretty much all the time.”
She said the spot is popular with the airport denizens because it’s close to the MetroLink stop, which is how most of the men she encounters get to this part of town to begin with.
“I’m wondering which one it was,” Miller said of the victim. Whoever it is, she’s certain it will be someone she’s seen many times before.
