Mo. Police: Officers Ran Low on Ammo, Firing Nearly 90 Shots in Rush Hour Shootout

By Kim Bell

Source St. Louis Post-Dispatch

BEL-RIDGE, MO — On a Wednesday afternoon in October, at the start of rush hour, police along an on-ramp to Interstate 170 got into a wild shootout — and key details of that shooting are just now emerging.

Police fired 87 rounds at a car that crashed after its driver sped away from a traffic stop and fired at them first, authorities said. The driver, critically hurt by police gunfire, may have fired two shots.

One officer running low on ammunition grabbed a backup rifle from a colleague's trunk to continue firing.

Those details surfaced in recent days, once the St. Louis County Police Department released a video review of the shooting. Three municipal officers fired shots. They are from the Woodson Terrace and Breckenridge Hills police agencies.

Those two small departments asked St. Louis County to investigate the shooting for them.

Video details police shootout along I-170

A police officer's body camera shows the weapon he pulled from the trunk after he ran low on ammunition during a shootout Oct. 30, 2024, in Bel-Ridge.

The municipal officers were cleared by their chiefs, who deemed the shooting justified and said the officers followed policy. No officers were hurt in the shootout Oct. 30, which was near I-170 and Natural Bridge Road.

The man they shot, Je'von Henderson, survived after being hit seven times, including in the abdomen, leg and shoulder. Surgeons removed one of his lungs after a bullet punctured it, said Henderson's defense attorney, Ryan Krupp.

Krupp said this is an unusual case in part because of the number of bullets fired by police.

"I certainly have never had an officer-involved shooting where there were 87 unreturned shots," Krupp said. "It's not normal."

The day after the shooting, the St. Louis County prosecutor charged Henderson with assault, armed criminal action and resisting arrest. Henderson, 30, lives in the 9900 block of Sloane Square in Woodson Terrace. He remains jailed in lieu of $500,000 bond.

Je'von Henderson

On Thursday, Krupp plans to ask Associate Circuit Judge Nicole Zellweger to lower Henderson's bond. Krupp also said he is filing a motion to compel prosecutors to release all police reports and videos to him. Krupp said he asked for the evidence on Nov. 13 and has yet to receive anything.

Instead, Krupp said, he saw snippets of the videos for the first time when St. Louis County police released a 21-minute summary of the case on YouTube Friday afternoon. The review includes body camera footage, a map detailing the route of the chase and audio from a dispatcher.

County police Sgt. Tracy Panus said police are still investigating the shooting but chose to share the video publicly to provide an update "as part of our commitment to transparency." The video blurs the officers' faces.

But the police review, Krupp contends, is "a public propaganda video to get out ahead of why they shot 87 times."

Three officers fired shots, but Krupp said the videos published in the incident review only contains body camera footage from two officers. The missing footage is from the officer who would have had what Krupp argues is "the best, closest view" of Henderson.

Krupp said he doesn't see any proof in the video that Henderson fired at police.

Police shootout in Bel-Ridge

Panus said the county's review included all video that the police agencies gave them. The Breckenridge Hills police cars didn't have dash cams; and Woodson Terrace provided only in-car camera footage to investigators, Panus said. All other Woodson Terrace body worn or in-car cameras were either not equipped or not activated, Panus said.

Near the end of their review video, county police released a photo showing two guns found in Henderson's car. The guns were a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and an AR-15-style pistol. Two spent 9mm casings were in the car too, said Lt. Col. Gerald Lohr of the St. Louis County Police Department's Division of Criminal Investigation.

The shooting came after a traffic stop. About 4:30 p.m., Henderson was driving a 2014 Lexus when Breckenridge Hills officer Nate Mullins pulled him over in the 9300 block of Calvert Avenue in Woodson Terrace for a license plate violation and excessively tinted windows.

Mullins walked to the driver's window and talked with Henderson for about six minutes. Mullins was polite, telling a mumbling Henderson that he didn't need to be nervous. According to police body camera footage, the officer said he thought Henderson smelled like liquor, but Henderson wouldn't get out of the car to take a field-sobriety test.

As Henderson searched on his phone for a photo of his insurance card, which he told Mullins was expired, the officer returned to his patrol car, got a spike-strip and put it next to a back tire on the Lexus.

Henderson then sped off, immediately puncturing the tire.

Mullins ran back to his patrol car, jumped in, and gave chase. He radioed in he was pursuing Henderson for aggravated fleeing and DWI.

Henderson led police on a 1.5-mile chase, during which he hit a retaining wall in a residential neighborhood and raced down Natural Bridge at speeds of 80 mph in light traffic, according to dispatch tapes. The officer saw tires go flat on the Lexus. One tire flew off. Henderson lost control on the on-ramp to I-170. The car crashed in a grassy ditch along the ramp in Bel-Ridge.

Police said Henderson fired at officers first, and they answered with a barrage of gunfire.

It was a chaotic few minutes, with an officer running low on ammunition. The video shows the officer grab a backup rifle from a colleague's trunk, then fire more rounds.

"Down to one mag, one mag," he shouted, referring to his weapon's magazine.

Krupp — who said he couldn't comment on why Henderson sped away — said the police shooting "became this snowball effect," and the second and third officers to arrive didn't take time to assess the threat to determine if Henderson had actually fired at them. Police are trained to stop shooting once they perceive the threat is gone.

"Instead, the officers' shots are kind of building off each other," Krupp said. "They keep firing and firing and firing. It never ends."

The shots punched holes in the Lexus. Just beyond the ditch where the Lexus crashed was a small wooded area, and beyond that a neighborhood. Investigators haven't said where all of the bullets landed, but police said there were no reports of any homes or property struck on the streets nearby.

Meanwhile, Woodson Terrace Police Chief Danny Brown and Breckenridge Hills Police Chief Scott Robinson told the Post-Dispatch on Monday that the officers who shot Henderson have already been cleared and are back at work.

"They handled themselves well," Brown said. "They trained for it. They did a magnificent job."

Robinson said he welcomes the extra layer of scrutiny from county police. Robinson added, "We trust the officers that responded that day acted bravely, appropriately in the line of duty and out of necessity."

The Post-Dispatch on Tuesday requested copies of the entire videos from Woodson Terrace and Breckenridge Hills.

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