ST. LOUIS —ST. LOUIS — A homeless encampment in downtown St. Louis was cleared Friday after a fatal shooting in the vicinity led to a police officer’s fatal shooting of the alleged suspect Friday morning.

According to police, an officer who was working on a mobile camera unit in the area of 13th and Market noticed a shooting involving two men in the area near City Hall and the former 22nd Circuit Court building next door. The suspect in the shooting and the victim were running toward the officer, and the officer, who retrieved his service weapon, shot the suspect, who was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim was later pronounced dead at a St. Louis hospital.

Police have not released the identity of the suspect or the victim.

By mid-day Friday,  city crews had erected barricades in front of the former courts building, which had been used as a homeless encampment for some time.

Police have not said if the encampment itself was tied to the incident, but Alderman Rasheen Aldridge said the victim in the shooting was someone who he’d seen around the area. 

“He’s not aggressive. He doesn’t panhandle. He’s clearly suffering with some mental health but he’s usually a very nice individual,” Aldridge said.

Aldridge has been an advocate for the homeless and had worked with police and city officials to manage the clearing of another encampment at City Hall in October. He said the encampment at the court building had reached a problematic point because he said people were trying to take advantage of homeless people staying there, selling them drug paraphernalia.

“I hate that it went out this way because I want to make sure that we still put people in housing, transitional housing, one’s that don’t want to go into housing, how do we work with them, because the only thing this will do is just move them to another location,” he said.

The Board of Aldermen has debated several pieces of legislation related to the homeless and encampments in recent years, including an “Unhoused Bill of Rights”, which would have repealed ordinances that criminalize homelessness and guarantee protections for people displaced from intentional encampments.

“When you have intentional encampments, you’re able to have security, you’re able to provide spaces for folks to get their basic needs met and create less danger,” said Alderwmoman Alisha Sonnier, who is working for a third time on legislation that would amend city zoning codes to allow for residential shelters. 

She called Friday’s events tragic for all involved, including people who relocated.

“They won’t be necessarily be moving into services, they will just be moved to another location,” she said.