RFT 📰

Video of a police officer punching an unarmed man on the ground outside a gas station in Cape Girardeau attracted thousands of views on Facebook last night, leading the police department to release body cam footage of the incident this morning. According to the Cape Girardeau Police Department, the interaction began yesterday around 3:30 p.m. when an officer responded to a Rhodes gas station not far from Southeast Missouri State University's campus in response to a reported theft. As the officer was speaking to employees, the suspect in the theft returned to the premises.

At first we were like, “Good gracious, Nelly’s music festival is bodacious!” Nelly’s first ever “Hot in Herre” music festival was announced this week and the lineup is stacked with classic acts.

You never know what you’ll find at an auction hosted by Selkirk Auctioneers & Appraisers (555 Washington Avenue, Suite 129, 314-696-9041). The renowned auctioneers are known for offering a wide variety of high-quality items from (almost) priceless art to fairly-priced smaller luxury items like gold money clips and vintage fur coats.

The first time I tried to smoke a cigarette was a disaster. I, like Bill Clinton, did not inhale.

The St. Louis Cardinals are bringing back one of its most anticipated ticket options of the year. With the purchase of the $34.99 monthly subscription, the Budweiser Ballpark Pass allows fans to attend any home game they want — at any time. People will receive access to standing-room-only tickets located throughout Busch Stadium, with exceptions for opening day and the final game.

Hana Maue was almost home. She had just finished her Monday night shift at Target in Fenton and was heading south on Highway 21 to Hillsboro, where she lived with her parents and identical twin sister, Claire Maue. About five miles from the Hillsboro exit, Hana was struck head-on by a 16-year-old drunk driver going the wrong way in the southbound lanes.

The man charged with causing a crash on South Grand Boulevard that took four lives over the weekend has a history of flouting traffic laws in both St. Louis and the Metro East. Cedric Dixon, 34, of St. Louis has been charged with 17 crimes after police say he fled the scene of a crash he caused in Midtown early Sunday morning.

This story originally published in the Missouri Independent. The picture painted by whistleblower Jamie Reed of how patients were treated at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital doesn’t match Jess Jones’ experience. Jones worked alongside Reed for two years as the center’s educational coordinator before resigning in 2020.

An anonymous story about something that could only happen in the Gateway City He was a Black man in Plaza Frontenac just walking around, but I wasn't with him.

Catch up-and-coming literary star (and Southern Illinois University professor) Rafael Frumkin as he discusses his debut novel Confidence. Described as a queer take on the thriller genre, this page-turner limns the absurdity of the American Dream via myriad schemes and scams centered around two best friends (and occasional lovers) who found a company that offers its clients instant enlightenment.

Linda Ronstadt is having a moment. Her heartrending “Long, Long Time” was featured on HBO’s The Last of Us — and if there’s any recipe these days for breaking through the noise to become a bona fide sensation, it’s being on the soundtrack of a hit HBO show. 

Thursday 03/02 One Deadly Night Called an "orgy of sadism" when it came out in 1968, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead immediately sparked controversy, not least because it came out before MPAA ratings were a thing and a lot of young kids were crying in the aisles while the zombies ate everyone.

Walking into the doors of the new exhibition space Wildfruit Projects (4704 Virginia Avenue), visitors are greeted by a collection of light and airy sculptures. There are multimedia pieces made out of materials from estate sales and hand-painted clothes. They're all the work of St. Louis artist Dail Chambers, who is exploring her heritage, migration and sustainability through her exhibit, Figure/Ground.

My dad loved Mark Twain, though I suspect his semi-regular insistence on day trips to Hannibal had more to do with ground beef than Mr. Clemens' wit. The evidence for this was our ritual stop at the Mark Twain Dinette before doing any other activities. An institution dating back to the early 1940s, the dinette was known for a lot of things — its status as the city's oldest restaurant, its location next to Twain's boyhood home and its homemade root beer — but the eatery's biggest claims to fame were its Maid-Rites, a hamburger-adjacent concoction that's generically known as a loose meat sandwich, which consists of seasoned ground beef tucked into a basic burger bun and classically dressed with pickles and yellow mustard.

This is not the ending St. Louis was hoping for. Paul and Wendy Hamilton announced this afternoon that they will not reopen the trio of restaurants damaged in a catastrophic fire last September. PW Pizza, Vin de Set and the 21st Street Brewers Bar are now permanently closed.

After more than 30 years behind the microphone, Vintage Vinyl record store owner Tom "Papa" Ray will no longer DJ on the community radio station KDHX (88.1 FM). Ray hosted the show Soul Selector, highlighting soul, blues and R&B on Mondays from 4 to 7 p.m.

Video obtained by the RFT appears to show a 20-year-old woman opening fire on two Confluence Preparatory Academy students last December. That woman, Cierra Wealleans, was charged with assault and armed criminal action that month and has remained free on bond despite violating the terms of her bond twice in December and eight times in January.

Teri Clemens won seven national championships in a legendary 14-year span as a Washington University volleyball coach. Then she had to retire as her health deteriorated.

Terrell "Young Dip" Evans was looking at the calendar planning events when he noticed the abbreviation for March 14, 3/14, was also the area code for the St. Louis area. "Oh, 314, March 14, that’s dope," Evans told STL Made. "I started to jot it down, and I called my brother Tatum Polk and ran it by him.

St. Louis soccer fans are a lot of things: dedicated, a little crazy, the loudest crowd in the bleachers. But there's one thing St. Louis soccer fans are not — the bigoted, bro-ey assholes that sometimes emerge from European clubs.