On a Wednesday afternoon in July 2020, 21-year-old Jaquan Steed was shot and killed inside the Saint Louis Galleria mall during an altercation near the second-floor escalators. Steed, a recent Hazelwood Central High School graduate who had worked in the dietary department at Saint Louis University Hospital, was struck in the head and died at the scene; a friend was wounded in the arm and later released from hospital care. The shooting sent shoppers fleeing and left the mall shaken.

Police arrested 18-year-old Jaron Lemmitt the next day and charged him with second-degree murder, first-degree assault, and two counts of armed criminal action after he was found hiding in a hotel room. Investigators cited surveillance footage, eyewitness accounts and a firearm recovered in the parking lot that was forensically matched to casings at the scene; a still photo identification by Lemmitt’s father was also reported. In January 2022 the prosecutor announced the charges would be dropped, saying newly available video showed Lemmitt acting in self-defense and that Steed had initiated the confrontation and produced a gun that Lemmitt took and used.

Does anyone have additional firsthand information about what happened in the mall that afternoon?