On June 7, 2020, the life of African American teenager Alani Amari Hutchins was tragically cut short in a violent incident in St. Louis, Missouri. The sixteen-year-old female from Florissant had been out in the early morning hours in the city's Bevo neighborhood, sitting inside a vehicle parked in an alley on the 4200 block of Neosho Street. She was accompanied by two other individuals, a twenty-one-year-old man and an eighteen-year-old woman, when the group was targeted by gunfire around 2:00
a.m.
Officers from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department responded to the scene after reports of the shooting and discovered a chaotic aftermath. Alani was found unresponsive with fatal gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene by authorities. The male occupant of the car had also been struck by bullets and was transported to a local hospital in critical condition with unstable vitals. The eighteen-year-old woman who had been with them in the vehicle managed to escape the barrage of gunfire without physical injury.
Detectives from the Homicide Division immediately launched an investigation into the deadly double shooting, scouring the alley for evidence and seeking potential witnesses. Despite their efforts to piece together the events that led to the violence, information regarding a perpetrator remained scarce in the immediate aftermath. Public reports following the incident indicated that no suspects had been identified, and law enforcement released no descriptions of a potential shooter. The case was categorized among a string of unsolved violent crimes involving youths in the area during that period, leaving the investigation open as authorities continued to appeal to the community for any leads that could result in an arrest.
