ST. LOUIS _ An off-duty St. Louis police officer was shot and killed early Thursday when another officer "mishandled" a gun at a home in the Carondelet neighborhood, police said.
The officer, 24-year-old Katlyn Alix, was in the living room of another officer who was on duty but at the home just before 1 a.m. when he "mishandled a firearm and shot (Alix) in the chest," police said in a written statement Thursday morning.
Police Chief John Hayden said two male officers who were on duty went to one of their homes during their shift. Alix, who was off duty, stopped by and was shot in the chest in what Hayden called the "accidental discharge of a weapon."
The officers then rushed Alix to the hospital, calling in to police dispatch to report the shooting as they drove. Alix was pronounced dead at St. Louis University Hospital.
She was killed with a revolver, not a department weapon, according to a police source. Alix and the two on-duty male officers were close and often worked together, the source said.
A gun was recovered by investigators at the scene. There was no word on why the officers were all at an officer's home while two of them were on duty, or why they were handling the weapon. It's not clear who owned the weapon. Hayden would not say how many shots were fired, how many times Alix was shot or whether anyone was in custody.
"All that will be part of the investigation," he said in response to questions at an early morning press conference.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner's office tweeted that a prosecutor and two of her investigators had gone to the scene and have opened an investigation into the shooting.
Hayden meanwhile praised Alix in a statement released to the media.
"Officer Alix was an enthusiastic and energetic young woman with a bright future ahead of her," Hayden said in an emailed statement released later Thursday. "On behalf of the Metropolitan Police Department, I extend my deepest sympathies to the Alix family during this extremely difficult time. I ask the St. Louis community to keep the Alix family and the entire Metropolitan Police Department in your thoughts and prayers as we mourn this tragic loss."
Alix joined the St. Louis Police Academy in June of 2016 and graduated in January of 2017. She had served in the Sixth District, and at the time of her death she was assigned to the Second District as a patrol officer.
She is survived by her husband, mother, father and sister, the department said.
'Somebody help!'
The shooting happened inside a home in the 700 block of Dover Place, where blood still stained the steps on Thursday morning.
A neighbor told the Post-Dispatch she heard a gunshot just before 1 a.m. and then someone yelling.
"Oh, my God!" the voice said. "Somebody help!"
The neighbor, who didn't want her name used, said she went to the window and saw a male officer in uniform. He was speaking to someone, perhaps by phone or police radio, she said."We're at Dover and Colorado," he said, describing the nearest intersection to the home. Then he drove away quickly in a police car, the neighbor said, apparently taking the injured officer to the hospital. A short time later, many other officers showed up on Dover, the neighbor said.
Another neighbor said on Twitter that she heard loud yelling that got her out of bed during the night. She also heard a loud thump, but nothing she recognized as a gunshot.
Reached by the Post-Dispatch, she said she had spoken to investigators, but said she didn't want to speak to a reporter beyond confirming her account on Twitter, for fear of jeopardizing the investigation.
An "officer in need of aid" call went out at 12:56 a.m., according to logs of St. Louis calls. Such a call over police radios brings assistance from any nearby officers. That was followed by an entry reporting it as a shooting about 10 minutes later, then a request for an evidence unit.
Police released Alix's name and some additional details about the shooting about 11:30.
Alix had graduated from St. Charles Community College and served as a military police officer before joining the St. Louis Police Department, a police source said. She graduated from the police academy in January 2017 and had worked in the Sixth District, in the northern part of the city, and the Second District, in the western part of the city. The male officers, both 29, have not been publicly identified.
The officer who shot Alix has been one the force about a year. The other on-duty officer who was there has been with the department about two years.
The St. Louis Police Officers Association said it, along with the public, wanted to know more about what happened.
"But for now, we wait; we wonder; and we weep," said Jeff Roorda, the union's business manager. The union asked for privacy for the officer's family and said the focus should be on her contributions.
"She served her community and her nation with dignity and courage both as a police officer and as a member of the military," Roorda said. "That is how she lived, as a hero."
Mayor Lyda Krewson expressed her sympathy to the officer's family and friends on Twitter.
St. Louis County police also tweeted condolences.
