In the early morning hours of July 1, 2015, authorities in North St. Louis County, Missouri, were alerted to a shooting incident that would leave a local family devastated. Officers dispatched to the 9800 block of Green Valley Drive arrived to find the body of a man lying in the front yard of a residence. The victim, identified as Luther Lonell Finch II, had sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the chest and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators with the St. Louis County Police Department’s Crimes Against Persons Unit immediately began processing the area for evidence. In the initial stages of the inquiry, detectives detained a woman for questioning regarding the 34-year-old Black male's death. Despite the detainment, law enforcement officials released her shortly thereafter without filing any charges, citing the need for further investigation into the circumstances surrounding the homicide. Police continued to canvass the neighborhood and interview potential witnesses to piece together the events that led to the fatal shooting.
The tragedy for the Finch family was compounded just months later when Luther’s father became the victim of a separate violent crime. In late August of that same year, the elder Finch was shot while reportedly attempting to intervene during a vehicle break-in at his home, succumbing to his injuries in September. The deaths of both father and son within such a short timeframe contributed to a spike in homicide statistics for the region that year, leaving the cases as stark reminders of the violence affecting the community.
