Steffen D. Smith was 17 years old when he was killed in St. Louis on Saturday, November 3, 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 Steffen Smith 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 parents, brothers or sisters, classmates and friends 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 Steffen D. Smith 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.
His age stands out most. At 17, he was still a minor, of high school age. A boy that young would have had parents or guardians, teachers and friends who noticed right away when something was wrong. His name is also hard to search: "Steffen D" and "Smith D" appear together in hundreds of scientific papers by researchers with those names, which buries any trace of the teenager killed in St. Louis.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in north St. Louis, in the area of the Hyde Park and College Hill neighborhoods, a few miles north of downtown. The database places it almost exactly where Antwone Chatman was shot in a vacant lot on John Avenue four months earlier, in July 2012, and a few blocks from where Gabriel Noldin was killed on East De Soto Avenue in June 2011. People who lived in that area in November 2012 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. Killings of teenagers often leave behind friends who know more than they ever told police, and cases with few public details often faded from view quickly.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Steffen D. Smith could be found in news archives or public records. More than 13 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Steffen Smith, who went to school with him, saw him in the days before November 3, 2012, or 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.
