Zachary Simmons, 50, of the 3000 block of Washington Boulevard, was shot and killed in front of a home in the 900 block of Riverview Boulevard in the Baden neighborhood of north St. Louis on the evening of Monday, June 20, 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, police got a call about the shooting at about 7 p.m. Officers found Simmons in front of a home on Riverview. He had been shot several times and died at the scene. No one else was reported hurt. Police said witnesses saw Simmons talking with the gunman just before he was shot.
That detail matters. It means at least one person saw the gunman up close in the moments before the shooting, and it suggests Simmons may have known the man or at least stopped to speak with him.
Police did not release a description of the gunman, a vehicle, or a motive, and no reward for information appears in the available record. Police identified Simmons the next morning.
Little about Zachary Simmons's life has entered the public record. No obituary or memorial page for him could be found for this account. He lived on Washington Boulevard in the city's central corridor, several miles south of where he died, which raises the question of why he was in Baden that evening. Family members, friends or neighbors may know whom he went to see.
Zachary Simmons is also a common name. Searches turn up other men with the name who were arrested in Oklahoma, Indiana and California in later years, as well as doctors, lawyers and others across the country. Those people have nothing to do with his death, and none of those arrests is about this case.
The 900 block of Riverview Boulevard is in Baden, a residential neighborhood in far north St. Louis near the city's border with St. Louis County. A shooting at 7 p.m. on a June evening, with daylight left and people outside, is the kind of event many neighbors would have seen or heard. Several other killings in this group of open cases, including those of Darral D. Lawson, Mark Petty, Maurice Antwon Willis and Reginald L. Booker, took place in the same part of the city that spring.
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.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Zachary Simmons 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. The witnesses who saw Zachary Simmons talking with the gunman on Riverview Boulevard that evening, and anyone else who knew why he was in Baden, may hold the key to this case. 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.
