On September 16, 2016, a 37-year-old African American male named Edward Terrell Jones was found deceased in the north St. Louis neighborhood of Fairground Park. Police officers responding to the scene discovered the victim suffering from fatal gunshot wounds near the intersection of Natural Bridge Avenue and Vandeventer Avenue. The homicide was one of several violent incidents in the area during that period, contributing to a spike in local gun violence statistics.
Despite an investigation by homicide detectives, public records do not indicate that a specific suspect was identified or charged in connection with his death at the time, and the case appears to have remained unsolved in the years immediately following the incident.
In a separate and more recent case involving an individual of the same name, a 74-year-old man named Edward L. Jones died while in custody at the Buzz Westfall Justice Center in St. Louis County on March 6, 2023. This Edward Jones had been arrested in November 2022 on charges related to a domestic dispute involving the shooting of his son. His death was attributed to a gastrointestinal hemorrhage caused by an untreated ulcer. Following his death, his widow filed a federal lawsuit in March 2025 against St. Louis County and several jail officials, alleging that the medical staff and corrections officers ignored his repeated pleas for help and signs of internal bleeding, including black and bloody stools, in the weeks leading up to his passing.
While there were no criminal arrests for murder in the 2023 jail death case, the civil lawsuit names multiple defendants, including the former Justice Services Director and medical personnel, accusing them of negligence and deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The lawsuit seeks damages for what the family describes as a preventable death resulting from the systemic failure of the jail's healthcare protocols. Conversely, in the 2016 shooting death of the younger Edward Jones, no arrests or successful prosecutions have been widely reported, leaving that criminal investigation without a publicly named suspect.
