Illinois State Police arrested two teenagers on July 12 following a shooting that killed five members of one family and wounded two others across multiple locations in East St. Louis, Illinois. The suspects were taken into custody at Frank Holten State Park after officers executed a precision immobilization technique (PIT) maneuver on a vehicle one of them was driving. Officials publicly announced the arrests on July 12.
Ja’ymier Davis, 16, of East St. Louis, faces five counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated vehicular hijacking, unlawful use of a stolen firearm and dismembering a human body, among other charges. The St. Clair County State’s Attorney’s Office charged him as an adult. A 15-year-old girl, who officials say is related to all five victims, has been charged with first-degree murder in juvenile court, though prosecutors plan to request her case be moved to adult criminal court. Under Illinois’ Juvenile Court Act, defendants 16 or older automatically face adult charges in first-degree murder cases. Davis appeared in court on July 14 and was ordered held in custody, with a detention hearing scheduled for July 15.
The victims were Cherie L. May, 49; Devin D. May, 24; Patricia A. May, 74; Quentin L. Thompson, 21; and Shania W. Thompson, 25 — all East St. Louis residents. Two other family members suffered serious injuries and were taken to a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, for treatment.
Three Locations, Miles Apart
The shootings occurred at three different sites within a few miles of each other in East St. Louis. One victim was fatally shot near Summit Avenue and North 39th Street. Three others were killed at the Samuel Gompers Homes public housing complex. The fifth victim died at Jones Park, where the two survivors were also wounded. No bystanders were hit in any of the attacks. Authorities have not disclosed a precise timeline for when each shooting took place. Charging documents do not specify a motive. Marcus May, the 15-year-old’s father, told local media his daughter was angry with relatives and conspired with Davis, her boyfriend, to carry out the killings after relatives opposed their relationship — an account authorities have not confirmed.
Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly described such quintuple shooting events in East St. Louis as “extremely rare.”
Patricia A. May, 74, the oldest of the five victims, held a position at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for a quarter-century, from 1986 through 2011, the university confirmed.
Gun Laws and the State Border
Kelly declined to comment on how the teenagers may have obtained firearms. Illinois enforces some of the nation’s strictest gun regulations, mandating that gun buyers possess a Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card. Yet East St. Louis lies directly on the state line with Missouri — which has minimal firearm restrictions, requiring no purchase or carry permits, maintaining no gun owner registry, imposing no rules on private gun transfers or storage, and allowing minors to possess rifles and shotguns. Missouri does prohibit selling firearms to minors without parental consent, but otherwise creates few obstacles.
East St. Louis — a city of nearly 18,000 people situated across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis — sits in close proximity to Missouri’s more permissive firearms environment, a reality that has drawn scrutiny from gun violence researchers and law enforcement alike.
A Pattern of Family Annihilation
The East St. Louis killings fit the definition of a crime type known since the 1980s as “family annihilation” — cases in which a perpetrator kills multiple close family members, most often with a firearm. A July 2023 investigation by the Indianapolis Star found such incidents were occurring across the U.S. every five days on average. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan tracking organization, recorded the East St. Louis attack as at least the 12th mass murder in the U.S. so far in 2026. More than 240 mass shootings — defined as incidents in which four or more victims are wounded or killed — had been recorded nationwide in 2026.
The East St. Louis killings are the latest in a string of domestic-related mass shootings across the country in recent months. On June 9, a man fatally shot four people, including his parents, his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend, at a home in suburban Detroit before surrendering to police. On June 1, a 52-year-old man killed six family members in a shooting spree across a small city in eastern Iowa before taking his own life when confronted by officers. In May, Houston police investigated a murder-suicide in which a 52-year-old man shot his wife and two children before turning the gun on himself. In April, a gunman in northwest Louisiana killed eight children, seven of them his own, and wounded his wife and another woman in a mass shooting. That same month, former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax killed his wife, Cerina Fairfax, and then himself; their teenage son and daughter were home at the time but were not harmed.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions has characterized domestic violence as a “public health crisis,” stating that current or former romantic partners kill nearly half of all murdered women in the U.S., with firearms used in over half of such homicides. Research covering 2014 to 2019 found that roughly 68% of mass shooting cases included a perpetrator who killed family members or intimate partners, or had a history of domestic violence.
Kelly condemned the violence at a news conference following the arrests, saying, “It’s terrible, it’s evil, but it will not keep this city down.”
