Graves covered in trash, drugs as homeless take over South City cemetery, sparking concerns from neighbors

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - Frustrated Princeton Heights residents are demanding immediate action from city leaders as an unchecked homeless encampment inside the city-owned Gatewood Gardens Cemetery leaves headstones desecrated and neighbors fearful of nightly break-ins.

“There’s a lot of children, there’s a lot of schools - moms, dads walking their kids in strollers, and this has gotten out of control now,” Patrick Theodore, who lives nearby in Princeton Heights, said.

Just steps inside South City’s Gatewood Gardens Cemetery is a disturbing sight.

“It’s a complete disgrace what’s going on in there,” Scott Mudd, who lives near the cemetery, stated. “There’s tombstones that are covered, you can’t go see a loved one in there.”

Those who’ve passed are now covered in trash, drugs and stolen materials.

“You would think that with enough eyes on it, something would have been done, and absolutely nothing has been,” Mudd exclaimed.

Mudd lives just two blocks from the cemetery, which sits on Gravois Avenue just south of Loughborough. He said there’s no peace here.

“It’s a nightly occurrence in my alley, in between two and four o’clock in the morning, is them going through the alleys with flashlights looking in dumpsters, looking indoors, trying to get into garage doors, taking stuff - it’s got to stop,” Mudd said.

He, along with Theodore have been actively working to get this homeless squatting situation addressed, saying it’s been an issue here for years. Recently, though, it seems to have gotten worse.

“The crime is out of control,” Theodore said. “It seems like a big safety concern now, and it’s reached the level where we had to reach out to the news media to get something done.”

“The homelessness issue has been on our radar for some years now,” Deion Broxton, vice president of communications and public affairs with the St. Louis Development Corporation, stated.

First Alert 4 learned that the Gatewood Gardens Cemetery land is actually owned by the City of St. Louis. It falls under the Land Reauthorization Authority - or LRA - which is the city’s land bank.

“Since we’re responsible for this site, when we come and we see those items we remove those items but sometimes I think people are smart enough to realize when we’re coming they’ll take it with them and then bring it right back,” Broxton explained.

The LRA falls under the SLDC, and Broxton said they are actively working with St. Louis Metropolitan Police to keep the site clean and get rid of trespassers.

“We’ve worked with the St. Louis metropolitan police department just as recent as yesterday,” Broxton said. “We called them and asked if they could do more patrols in this area and they said they would.”

The city’s Department of Human Services also told First Alert 4 they are aware of the issue and are working to get resources out to the homeless who are congregating there.

“We have been in communications with LRA and we do have outreach planned for this site,” Ryan Sheehan, public information officer with the department of human services, said. “The city does have a new process for how we identify encampments and we might consider disbandment or decommissioning, but I don’t think any of those discussions have been had yet but it’s an ongoing situation.”

However, neighbors we spoke with said they want to see action taken as soon as possible.

“It’s a citywide thing and we know that and we know that some things are getting done and some things are not getting done - especially in this community,” Theodore stated.

“If it would be cleaned up I think a lot of the crime and the foot traffic through these alleys in all hours of the night would stop,” Mudd exclaimed.

First Alert 4 asked for a timeline for when those resources may be provided to residents as well as when the sites would next be cleaned up. The city could not provide one for us.

We also reached out to the alderman for this area to see if he was aware of these concerns. He did not get back to us.