St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 2021
Keith Pernell arrived home from a Father’s Day trip to Branson on Monday evening and was just settling back into his Greater Ville home when the gunfire began. “It sounded like a war zone,” he said. Pernell soon heard sirens swarming the 4000 block of Sullivan Avenue, about four blocks from his house, and decided to walk with his wife to survey the scene. “As we got closer, I felt funny like I shouldn’t go,” Pernell said. “And lo and behold, we saw OJ dead lying in the school yard.”
Pernell’s younger brother, OJ Pernell, 44, was one of three men killed in the spray of gunfire about 7:30 p.m. that night. Police found him dead on the property of Farragut Elementary School. One of OJ’s friends, Kevin Page, 40, and another man, Charlie Anderson, 31, were found dead on the curb outside the candy store that Page owned. Four others were wounded by the gunfire.
Police haven’t yet said what prompted the shooting or how many people opened fire, but Pernell said people who witnessed the violence told him it was connected to a domestic feud. Police have said the “motives and roles” of those who were shot were still being investigated. “I’m just so tired and sick of this,” Pernell said Wednesday. “They didn’t care who was around, who they hit.”
