Decarlos Coleman was 25 years old when he was killed in St. Louis on Wednesday, October 10, 2012. 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.
Beyond his name, his age and the date of his death, almost nothing about Decarlos Coleman has been made public. No news story about his killing, obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. He surely had family, friends and neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say how he was killed, whether he was attacked indoors or on the street, whether he knew the attacker, what time of day it happened, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital.
It does not say whether anyone else was hurt or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
An online case listing on CrimeTea, a site that catalogs unsolved killings, also lists Decarlos Coleman 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.
The date stands out. The database records the death of another man in this group of open cases, Larold Brice, 31, on the same day, October 10, 2012, also in north St. Louis, about a mile to the west. Brice was found shot behind the ear in a car on Riverview Boulevard. Nothing in the public record says whether the two deaths were connected, and the database gives different locations for them.
His first name is less common than most, and is sometimes spelled DeCarlos or Decarlo, which may matter to anyone trying to find a record of him. At 25, he would likely have had parents, brothers or sisters, perhaps children or a partner, and friends who noticed when he was gone.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in north St. Louis, several miles north of downtown, a residential part of the city with blocks of brick homes, flats and vacant lots. People who lived in that area in October 2012 may remember Decarlos, and may remember the police activity that followed his death.
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 Decarlos Coleman could be found in news archives or public records. More than 14 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Decarlos Coleman, who saw him in the days before October 10, 2012, or who heard talk afterward about what happened to him, may be able to help. 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.
