Update: St. Louis Police will apply for murder charges for two more murders. They also say Reed is connected to another shooting.
CLAYTON, Mo. – Local and federal authorities have linked a man to at least a pair of homicides and a shooting in St. Louis County in recent weeks. On Saturday, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office charged Perez Reed with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree assault, and three counts of armed criminal action. Investigators say Reed shot both people in the same, “distinctive manner.”
Reed, who turns 26 on Wednesday, was apprehended by an FBI task force and is in federal custody. If he’s transferred to St. Louis County custody, Reed will be jailed on a $2 million cash-only bond.
FBI agents said Reed was in possession of a .40-caliber handgun that matched shell casings located at all three crime scenes. The handgun also matched casings at several murders in the City of St. Louis.
The homicides listed on the indictment occurred on Sept. 13 and Sept. 26. The shooting took place on Sept. 12.
According to St. Louis County Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. Tracy Panus, the Sept. 13 shooting happened just after 9:30 p.m. in the 9900 block of Glen Owen Drive.
Police responded to a ShotSpotter activation at that location and found a girl, Marnay Haynes, who had been shot several times and was laying in the middle of the street. Haynes was pronounced dead at the scene. She was 16.
Haynes had been reported missing as a runaway but was not considered endangered. Investigators noted she’d been shot at least twice in a distinctive manner.
Authorities linked Haynes’ murder to two other killings in St. Louis City, although those instances are not among the incidents listed.
The victim in the Sept. 26 homicide, Lester Robison, was shot at least two times in the same manner as Haynes. He was gunned down at 7:15 p.m. in the 1700 block of Barbados Lane in Ferguson.
Prosecutors believe that Reed is tied to a third shooting. On Sept. 12, a man was found shot several times in his chest. He suffered serious physical injuries and permanent disability as a result. Authorities did not specify the location or time of this shooting.
On Monday afternoon, Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell will join members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Eastern Missouri, the FBI’s St. Louis Office, the St. Louis County Police Department, and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department at a news conference at 2 p.m. to further discuss this case.
