Two teenagers suspected in a “targeted mass shooting” that left five members of the same family dead in East St. Louis, Illinois, were arrested on July 12 at Frank Holten State Park — apprehended after Illinois State Police executed a precision immobilization technique (PIT) maneuver on a vehicle one of the suspects was driving. Officials publicly announced the arrests on July 12.
Ja’ymier Davis, 16, of East St. Louis, has been charged as an adult by the St. Clair County State’s Attorney’s Office with five counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated vehicular hijacking, unlawful use of a stolen firearm and dismembering a human body, among other counts. Under Illinois’ Juvenile Court Act, a defendant 16 or older is automatically charged as an adult in a first-degree murder case. The 15-year-old girl, who authorities say is related to all five victims, faces first-degree murder charges in juvenile court, and prosecutors have said they will ask that her case be transferred to adult criminal court. Davis appeared in court on July 14 and was ordered held in custody, with a detention hearing set for July 15.
The five people killed were Cherie L. May, 49; Devin D. May, 24; Patricia A. May, 74; Quentin L. Thompson, 21; and Shania W. Thompson, 25 — all residents of East St. Louis. Two additional family members were wounded and transported to a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, where they were treated for serious injuries. In total, seven members of the same family were shot.
Three Locations, Miles Apart
The killings unfolded across three separate locations within a few miles of one another in East St. Louis. One person was fatally shot near Summit Avenue and North 39th Street. Three more were killed at the Samuel Gompers Homes public housing complex. A fifth victim died at Jones Park, where the two survivors were also shot. No bystanders were struck in any of the attacks. Authorities have not released a precise timeline of when each shooting occurred, and charging documents do not state a motive.
The 15-year-old’s father, Marcus May, told local media that his daughter was upset with relatives and plotted the killings with Davis, her boyfriend, after the family had objected to their relationship — an account authorities have not confirmed.
Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly described such quintuple shooting events in East St. Louis as “extremely rare.”
Patricia A. May, 74, the oldest of the five victims, held a position at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for a quarter-century, from 1986 through 2011, the university confirmed.
Gun Laws and the State Border
Kelly declined to comment on how the teenagers may have obtained firearms. Illinois maintains some of the strictest gun laws in the country, requiring gun buyers to carry a Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card. However, East St. Louis sits directly on the Illinois state border with Missouri — a state with minimal firearm regulations, requiring no purchase or carry permits, maintaining no gun owner registry, imposing no rules on private gun transfers or storage, and allowing minors to possess rifles and shotguns. Missouri does make it illegal to sell firearms to minors without parental consent, but otherwise imposes few barriers.
The proximity of East St. Louis — a city of nearly 18,000 people situated across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis — to Missouri’s more permissive firearms environment has long drawn scrutiny from gun violence researchers and law enforcement alike.
A Pattern of Family Annihilation
The East St. Louis killings fit the definition of a crime type known since the 1980s as “family annihilation” — cases in which a perpetrator kills multiple close family members, most often with a firearm. A July 2023 investigation by the Indianapolis Star found such incidents were occurring across the U.S. every five days on average. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan tracking organization, recorded the East St. Louis attack as at least the 12th mass murder in the U.S. so far in 2026. More than 240 mass shootings — defined as incidents in which four or more victims are wounded or killed — had been recorded nationwide in 2026.
The East St. Louis killings are the latest in a string of domestic-related mass shootings across the country in recent months. On June 9, a man fatally shot four people, including his parents, his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend, at a home in suburban Detroit before surrendering to police. On June 1, a 52-year-old man killed six family members in a shooting spree across a small city in eastern Iowa before taking his own life when confronted by officers. In May, Houston police investigated a murder-suicide in which a 52-year-old man shot his wife and two children before turning the gun on himself. In April, a gunman in northwest Louisiana killed eight children, seven of them his own, and wounded his wife and another woman in a mass shooting. That same month, former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax killed his wife, Cerina Fairfax, and then himself; their teenage son and daughter were home at the time but were not harmed.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions has characterized domestic violence as a “public health crisis,” stating that current or former romantic partners kill nearly half of all murdered women in the U.S., with firearms used in over half of such homicides. Research covering 2014 to 2019 found that roughly 68% of mass shooting cases included a perpetrator who killed family members or intimate partners, or had a history of domestic violence.
Kelly condemned the violence at a news conference following the arrests, saying, “It’s terrible, it’s evil, but it will not keep this city down.”
