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A man who was injured by the suspect in this shooting died from his injuries months later, police announced Monday.

COLLINSVILLE - Madeline Woelfel, a senior for the girls bowling team at Civic Memorial, had a very successful IHSA regional tournament Feb. v5 at Camelot Bowl in Collinsville, finishing in a tie for second place overall with Collinsville's Courtney Baer with an identical six-game score of 1,267 as the Eagles went through as a team to the sectional at Mt. Vernon, finishing fourth to claim the final spot. Woelfel was fired up over the fact at her finish and the Eagles going on to the sectional, and in a post-tournament interview, talked about how exciting it was for CM to advance. "I'm very excited," Woelfel said, of advancing to sectional, "and I was really proud of our team that we could come out and get fourth as a team." Woelfel felt overall, she bowled well, but had trouble finding a strike zone in the final game, but made the needed adjustments to finish strong. "I'd say I bowled pretty well," Woelfel said. "I mean I was really trying to stay positive the whole time. Then, in

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"My Fair Lady" runs March 22 to April 3 at the Fox Theatre. Win with Five at the Fox!

Grab some popcorn, folks.…

by ProPublica

ProPublica has expanded its engagement team with the hiring of two new reporters — Byard Duncan and Asia Fields. In addition, Jessica Priest is joining as an engagement reporter for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune’s investigative unit, a first-of-its-kind collaboration focused on Texas. All three will use crowdsourcing and community outreach to engage diverse audiences for investigative projects.

“We are thrilled to add these extraordinarily talented journalists to our team,” ProPublica Crowdsourcing and Engagement Editor Ariana Tobin said. “Their proven ability to tell impactful, community-driven stories makes them a perfect fit for our newsroom.”

Byard Duncan joins ProPublica from Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. There, he created and managed Reveal’s Reporting Networks, which provide more than 1,100 local journalists across the U.S. with resources and training to continue Reveal investigations in their communities. Duncan also led engagement reporting initiatives around Reveal’s major investigations and reported on threats to U.S. democracy. He was part of Reveal’s “Behind the Smiles” project team, which exposed the true toll of Amazon’s relentless drive for speed on its workers by using public injury records from the company’s warehouses and deep sourcing from current and former Amazon workers. The project was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2019. Duncan is the recipient of two Gerald Loeb Awards, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, a National Headliner Award, an Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award and two first-place awards for feature storytelling from the Society of Professional Journalists and Best of the West. In addition to Reveal, Duncan’s work has appeared in GQ, Esquire, The California Sunday Magazine and Columbia Journalism Review, among other outlets.

Asia Fields joins ProPublica from the investigative team at the The Seattle Times, where she helped lead coverage of the coronavirus’ devastating toll in long-term care facilities, including the site of the nation’s first-known outbreak. She and her colleagues exposed early missteps that allowed the virus to spread in facilities and worked with the families of residents to track outbreaks at a time when officials weren’t able to provide data. This work was selected as a finalist for the Scripps Howard Award and IRE Award for breaking news. For a series on Title IX, Fields connected with dozens of survivors who felt their universities failed them and, in some cases, put other students in danger. Her work has also exposed gaps in colleges' sexual misconduct policies and led to a law in Washington state requiring schools to share information about employee misconduct as part of the hiring process.

Jessica Priest joins the ProPublica and The Texas Tribune investigative unit from the Fort Worth Report. As one of its founding reporters, she exposed corruption by the head of a large public port, prompting a grand jury investigation. At the Victoria Advocate, her call-out driven series about gaps in mental health care in rural Texas won the Star Investigative Report of the Year award from the Texas Associated Press Managers. Later that year, she drove to every apartment complex in Victoria to map damage from Hurricane Harvey, giving visibility to renters all but forgotten in the recovery process. The story and map were part of a series that received a Sigma Delta Chi Award for public service journalism. Most recently, at USA Today and the Austin American-Statesman, Priest detailed a Midland prosecutor’s serious conflict of interest. After this reporting, Texas’ highest criminal court overturned a death row inmate’s conviction. The State Bar of Texas has also recognized Priest’s reporting for fostering public understanding of the legal system and highlighting needs for reform. Her work has also appeared in the Houston Chronicle, the Temple Daily Telegram and the Texas Observer.

Twelve-week program boosts business acumen of diverse entrepreneurs; provides participants with support, connections and $5,000 in non-dilutive capital. Now in its fourth year, the Diverse Business Accelerator (DBA) has provided 36 portfolio companies 320 hours of programming and a total of $120,000 in funding.

If an album of 17 new Red Hot Chili Peppers songs isn't enough to satiate your needs, then we have good news. Speaking to NME, frontman Anthony Kiedis teases "another…

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by Patrick Rucker, The Capitol Forum

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This story was co-published with The Capitol Forum.

Saying they were “deeply troubled by recent reports” that JPMorgan Chase has “renewed its predatory practice of robo-signing,” six Senate Democrats on Monday asked Jamie Dimon, the company’s CEO, to provide “detailed information regarding the bank’s credit card debt collection practices.”

The letter, signed by five members of the Senate Banking Committee and its chairman, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, cited an article by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum that revealed how Chase had launched an ongoing lawsuit blitz against indebted credit card customers when the pandemic began battering the economy in early 2020.

Chase had stopped pursuing credit card lawsuits nearly a decade ago when regulators found that the bank’s legal paperwork was often faulty. Back then, Chase lawsuits did not include extensive billing records; they typically contained a two-page affidavit signed by a Chase employee who swore that the bank records were reliable.

Chase employees signed affidavits “without personal knowledge of the signer, a practice commonly referred to as ‘robo-signing,’” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau concluded in a consent order with Chase in 2015. Nearly 10% of lawsuits Chase won were for inflated totals and “contained erroneous amounts,” the CFPB found. Chase neither admitted nor denied the CFPB’s findings at the time, but agreed to provide “relevant information and documentation” in future suits.

When key terms of the CFPB settlement expired on New Year’s Day in 2020, Chase returned to suing credit card borrowers much as it did before, according to consumer lawyers and legal records.

“Chase should not utilize robo-signing in pursuing these debt collection suits, or any other debt,” according to the lawmakers’ letter. The letter asked Dimon to lay out the steps the company takes to verify the accuracy of its lawsuit claims. “How does Chase quality check the affidavits?” the lawmakers asked. “Do these employees have personal knowledge of the case?”

The letter also requested that Dimon provide details about the company’s credit card suits and their outcomes, and it inquired about Chase’s past promises to grant hardship exemptions to customers during the pandemic. Finally, the letter noted the “extensive evidence about racial disparities in debt collection” and asked what measures Chase has in place to make sure its debt collection practices don’t create these gaps.

Chase did not immediately reply to a request for comment. But in a statement for the earlier article by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum, Chase said its current system for processing credit card lawsuits is sound and reliable. “We quality-check 100% of our affidavits today,” the bank said. And, Chase said, “we continue to meet the requirements of the consent order.”

Before the CFPB settlement, roughly half a dozen Chase employees, working from a single San Antonio office, signed hundreds of thousands affidavits. Today, Chase has about a dozen employees mass-producing affidavits from the same office using some of the same methods as in the past, according to Chase employees and outside lawyers who have represented the company.

Chase declined to say how many suits it has filed in its blitz of the past two years, but civil dockets from across the country give a hint of the scale — and its accelerating pace. The company sued more than 800 credit card customers around Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last year after suing 70 in 2020 and none in 2019, according to a review of court records. In Houston, Chase filed more than 1,000 consumer debt lawsuits last year after filing only seven in 2020.

The lawmakers asked Dimon to respond to their letter by Feb. 21.

SOUTH ROXANA - Chralene O’Dell, one of two latest hires for the South Roxana Police Department, comes with high aspirations for the new position. For O’Dell, the job is “a dream come true.” She said for many years, she wanted to be a full-time post as a police officer. O’Dell, 29, said everyone in South Roxana and her department from Police Chief Bob Coles and the other officers has been very welcoming to her and embraced her with open arms. She said so far officers from surrounding towns in Roxana, Hartford, etc., have also been very accommodating. She was sworn into her new post on January 4, 2022. “I am very excited for South Roxana to hire our first female police officer,” South Roxana Police Chief/City Administrator Bob Coles said. “I think Charlie will be an excellent addition to our department and look forward to training and providing guidance for her to excel at the job and make this her forever home. “After Charlie's

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Our Love Story: The Couple: Darin and Amy from Alton Date Met/Started Dating: June 13, 2018 Briefly Describe First Date: He helped me move and then we got cheeseburgers at the Mini Corral. Date Married: December 12, 2020 Name Something You Enjoy Doing Together: We love playing Scrabble and watching re-runs of The Office. Share Advice For A Happy Relationship: Talk and laugh together often! Be quick to listen and slow to speak. Always be ready and willing to admit when you are wrong and/or sorry.

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St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern has appointed Debra Moore to serve as a member of the Bi-State Development Board of Commissioners through January 2027. The St. Clair County Board confirmed the appointment on January 31. Moore is the…

The exterior of the building will also get a new look to match. A new Starbucks will be coming to the location later this year as well.

by Heather Vogell

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Daniel Cooper could barely afford a tiny apartment at the 13-story Olume building in downtown San Francisco. But the expansive view from the roof deck captivated him.

Raised in a small city in Kentucky, Cooper was struck by the grandeur of the skyline before him, from the soaring heights of Salesforce tower, San Francisco’s largest skyscraper, to the gleaming gold cupolas atop St. Joseph’s Church, one of the city’s historic landmarks.

The sense of opportunity he felt when looking out on his new hometown helped convince the software engineer to become one of the glassy new building’s first tenants in 2016. He joined Mévis Mousbé, a driver for a ride-sharing service who had been the first to move in. She admired the high ceilings in her new junior studio on the sixth floor, which she shared with her Shih Tzu, Roxie-Jolie. A few months later, “Specs” Titus, an entrepreneur whose eyeglasses inspired her nickname, settled happily into a corner unit on the eighth floor with her daughter. She’d won it in a lottery for apartments with below-market rents.

But prospective tenants weren’t the only ones eyeing the new apartment building, with its 121 units, gym and rooftop fire pits.

In July 2017, Cooper received an email announcing that Greystar, the property management and real estate investment behemoth, was taking over the building. The private equity-backed firm was buying the Olume’s owner, Monogram Residential Trust, and its investments in four dozen properties scattered across 10 states. Cooper worried his new community was about to change.

As Greystar took charge, his alarm grew. Rents soared. Trash collected in the hallways and on the rooftop deck, Cooper said. The security guard showed up less often. One tenant said she was frightened when she encountered a large, seemingly drunk man she didn’t know dancing in a leotard and tutu in the parking garage. Another renter described having to heat her bathwater on the stove after she woke several times to find only cold water flowing from her tap.

“I understand that rent goes up, cost of living goes up, everything goes up,” Cooper said. “But with that, we would expect the quality of the building, and the quality of the management, would stay the same, and that was not what we saw.”

Greystar did not respond to questions about tenant complaints, except to say that resident satisfaction was “very important” to the company.

Cooper and his fellow tenants were experiencing firsthand the effects of a dramatic, though mostly unnoticed, shift in control of a vital portion of America’s housing stock, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by ProPublica.

During the past decade, private equity-backed firms such as Greystar have stormed into the multifamily apartment market, snapping up rentals by the thousands and becoming major landlords in American cities, according to ProPublica’s analysis of National Multifamily Housing Council data on the nation’s biggest owners of apartment buildings with five or more units.

Private Equity Firms Were Behind 85% of Freddie Mac’s Biggest Apartment Complex Deals !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r

Nikki Sixx kickstarted his weekend by dissing Pearl Jam as "one of the most boring bands in history." The Mötley Crüe bassist was responding to an interview Eddie Vedder recently gave…

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Struggling to find young people willing to sit on a riding lawn mower for 10 hours a day in the hot sun? No problem, Henry is here for hire. 

In a collaboration between Harris-Stowe State University and the PNC Bank, E3 is a newly launched program focused on closing the funding gap for Black business founders in St. Louis. PNC is providing the university with a 3-year $450,000 grant as part of a $88 billion community benefit and economic empowerment plan by the Bank […]

Mayor Tishaura Jones opened Black History Month with a visit to The Griot Museum on Tuesday, Feb. 1. She is joined by Lois D. Conley, the museum founder, president and CEO, at a wax statue of Dr. Carter G. Woodson,…

Name: Everett Cole Gutmann Parents: Cole Gutmann and Vanessa Simpson Birth Weight: 8 pounds 11 oz Birth Length: 20.5 inches Birth Date: 1/21/22 Time: 11:40 a.m. Hospital: Mercy South, St. Louis, MO Grandparents: Lynn and Chris Klunk of Grafton, IL; Daniel and Cindi Gutmann of Godfrey, IL; Kim and Dave Moody of Gray Summit, MO; Loren Simpson of Eureka, MO Great Grandparents: Howard and Victoria Blackwood of Alton, IL; Georgian Hock of Alton; James and Sharon Simpson of Hillsboro, MO; Cheryl Cooper of Gray Summit, MO Sibling: Francesca Julane Gutmann, three years old

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An Old Standby Years ago when I was cooking for seven every day, I often needed a quick meal. An old standby that I clipped from the newspaper was called Quick Spaghetti Supper, but my family always referred to the medley as Jungle Stew. It was a term my kids gave to the “mystery meats”... 

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The post Jungle Stew for a Quick Skillet Meal appeared first on Good Food St. Louis.