A little more than six months after filing kidnapping and assault charges against three men associated with an African church in South City, St. Louis city prosecutors are dropping the case.
Prosecutors told defense attorneys that today they will be dismissing all charges against Grace Kipendo, Pasi Heri, and Mmunga Fungamali, who were all arrested last February. Attorney Sue McGraugh, who represents Heri, says attorneys were given the news of the dismissal last night, but little information as to why it was happening now.
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St. Louis Circuit Attorney spokeswoman Christine Bertelson tells SLM the charges were dismissed because the evidence did not support them. “If we receive additional evidence we will review it,” she added.
Even though Heri is no longer facing criminal prosecution, McGraugh says he still paid a steep price, including being beaten while in custody at the St. Louis City Justice Center.
“These past six months have been extremely difficult for Mr. Heri. He was badly beaten at the Justice Center before he was allowed bond,” she says. “He has been prohibited from attending his church and having contact with many of his friends. I hope that the Circuit Attorney will be more cautious with their charging decisions in the future.”
The men were charged after a kidnapping was reported in the early morning of Saturday, February 24. A woman had fled the Mount of Olives Ministry on Marceau Street in the city’s Patch neighborhood. She ran to a house one block over, crying for help. Police who arrived at the scene noted rope marks around her arms and ankles. She then led officers back to the church, showing them a room where she said she’d been tied up, beaten, given only water to drink, and forced to use a bucket as a makeshift toilet.
Though dozens of people were present at the church at the time, police arrested Kipendo, Heri, and Fungamali at the scene. At a bond hearing for one of the men, a prosecutor who had viewed police body cam footage from the arrest said that the church had cult-like conditions, including a “white room” for women deemed “good angels” wearing white veils. “Officers tried to lift their veils to check on their well-being and the women started screaming,” the prosecutor said.
Some neighbors of the church told reporters they’d been unsettled by how parishioners acted while hanging out outside of it. Others familiar with the church said that people were just unsettled by a type of Christianity they hadn’t encountered before. All three men are immigrants from West Africa.
Defenders of the church said the criminal charges all boiled down to a cultural misunderstanding between law enforcement and the predominantly Swahili-speaking congregation. “I don’t think the victim even knows my guy’s name,” said attorney Chris Combs, who represents Kipendo, at the time.
In the wake of the incident, the city condemned the church building, but then quickly reversed course, allowing it to reopen for worship.
Attorney Justin Summary, who represents Fungamali, says he never had any doubts about his client’s innocence. Fungamali was en route from Canada to St. Louis when the woman was initially allegedly held against her will.
“We had his boarding pass from his flight to the United States,” says Summary. “My guy has always said he had nothing to do with this.”
Fungamali lives in Canada and has been barred from going home for the past six months while the charges were pending against him. His trip here in February was his first ever to the United States.
“I can’t imagine getting here to the United States, then getting stuck in a St. Louis city jail,” says Summary.
Even with the case’s dismissal, there still remains the mystery of what happened to the woman with rope marks on her arms and ankles. In various court hearings, even attorneys representing the three men acknowledged she had been victimized by someone.
As Combs put it in March, a few weeks after charges were filed: “No one is denying there is a victim in this case.”
