Gabriel Noldin, 35, of the 6700 block of Champana Drive in north St. Louis County, was shot to death in the 2000 block of East De Soto Avenue in north St. Louis on Monday, June 13, 2011. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department investigated his death. The Washington Post's homicide database, which tracked killings in St. Louis through 2017, lists it as a homicide that remained open with no arrest.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Noldin was shot multiple times at about 11:55 a.m., just before noon, and died at the scene on De Soto. The reports do not say whether he was on foot or in a car, whether anyone else was with him, or whether anyone else was hurt. A shooting in broad daylight on a weekday is the kind of event that people nearby are likely to have seen or heard.
Police made no arrests in the days after the shooting and did not release a possible motive.
No description of a gunman or of a vehicle has been made public, and no reward for information appears in the available record.
An obituary gives a fuller picture of his life. It says Gabriel LaMont Noldin Sr. was born on October 26, 1975, in St. Louis, to William Rhone Jr. and Bobbie A. Noldin. The "Sr." in his name shows he had a son named after him. The obituary also marks a date in his life, March 22, 2008, though the short excerpt available does not say what happened that day, and the rest of the text could not be read for this account.
East De Soto Avenue runs through a residential part of north St. Louis, in the area of the Hyde Park and College Hill neighborhoods, a few miles north of downtown. The database places two other open killings in this group, those of Antwone Chatman in July 2012 and Steffen D. Smith in November 2012, within a few blocks of the same spot. People who lived or worked near the 2000 block of East De Soto that Monday may remember the shots or someone leaving.
St. Louis has long had one of the highest homicide rates of any large American city. The city recorded more than 100 homicides in every year of the early 2010s, and the yearly totals later climbed to 188 in 2015 and 205 in 2017. In many of those years, fewer than half of the city's killings ended in an arrest. Cases with few public details, like his, often faded from view quickly.
An online case listing on CrimeTea, a site that catalogs unsolved killings, also lists Gabriel Noldin as a murder victim and the case as active, with St. Louis Regional Crime Stoppers named as a contact. That listing adds no new details, but it shows the case was still counted among the city's open killings years later.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Gabriel Noldin could be found in news archives or public records. More than 15 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was on East De Soto Avenue that Monday morning, who knew why Gabriel Noldin was there, or who heard talk afterward about who shot him, may be able to help his family and his son get answers. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Division at 314-444-5371, or call CrimeStoppers at 866-371-TIPS (866-371-8477), where tips can be anonymous.
