On February 24, 2020, 45-year-old Maria Lucas, a city employee working as acting supervisor at the Maryland Heights Community Center in Maryland Heights, Missouri, was fatally shot at the facility’s front desk. About 150 people were inside the center that Monday evening when a part-time janitor, Michael J. Honkomp, returned after being told to go home early. After retrieving a 9mm semiautomatic handgun from his vehicle, he walked back into the lobby and shot Lucas in the head.

A woman fleeing the building flagged down a uniformed officer in the parking lot, who entered the center and exchanged multiple rounds with the gunman. The officer incapacitated Honkomp, who was seriously injured and later arrested. Honkomp survived and was charged; court filings say he later pled guilty to second-degree murder, first-degree assault on a special victim, resisting arrest, and three counts of armed criminal action, and told the court he intended to provoke a lethal response because of mental health struggles.