UPDATED:KMOX.com: "Washington Park, Ill. (KMOX) -- Police in the Metro-East are searching for one of two men believed to have shot and killed Washington Park Mayor John Thornton.Police were called to the scene of a car wreck around 6:00 a.m. in 47-hundred block of Caseyville Avenue. That's when officers found Mayor John Thornton in his vehicle.
He had been shot twice in the chest at close range while he sat in his car.
Thornton was transported to Kenneth Hall Hospital in East St. Louis, but was pronounced dead on arrival shortly after six.Witnesses to the shooting, report two suspects were involved. Police do have a person of interest in custody.Around 7 this morning officers tracked down a red Impala, believed to be used in the shooting, parked in front of the Rossevelt Housing project in East St. Louis.Police tells KMOX, the mayor had just gotten off work at the Metro East Levee District and was in his car with one of the suspects.At this point details get sketchy. Police say another person approached the vehicle and the mayor was shot.Both men then got into the red impala and drove off. Police continue their hunt for the other suspect. The Illinois State Police are investigating the incident."
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Anyhow, quick story if your interested ;>) about me and East St Louis: when I was a teen I briefly lived in St Louis County living with my father after my parents became divorced, and we (me and my young and then dumb buddies) used to go across the border into East St Louis as white bread as we were, and would pull up to these "drive thru liquor stores" I sh** you not they had there in those days, at least in 1979 they did, and illegally buy our booze.
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And strangely, the first guy I did this with as a young kid in Parkway West High School which at the time was the best high school in America and was featured on 60 minutes for that reason was a big deal around those parts them days and one person you would have thought wouldn't need to buy illegally 20 miles away but he did..
It was August Busch IVth, who was one of my loosely connected friends back then in 79-80, and yea, that's the Anheauser Busch, Busch Gardens etc family (company was actually sold not too long ago to a foreign entity nonetheless) who lived right down the road from myself and my father, who lived with his new wife and step daughter/sister, who himself was the CEO of PET incorporated in those days. That would be the "Pet Ritz pie shell / Progresso soup / Old El Paso food company which is or at least was at that time a very big employer in St Louis area in the 80's, along with Anheuser Busch and Raltson Purina.
I was there for my freshman and sophomore years of high school, 15 and just 16, and we were good time partying friends, and while not really troublemakers at all, when it did arise, his background along with some of the other kids with fathers known in the area usually enabled the easy cover up all that kind of stuff, but not so for the "not so rich and famous" friends of his, like me, as my dad didn't go for that "I'll get you out of everything" mentality AT ALL. (later luckily for me, or I'd a been a liberal today for it)
As a result, I was soon on a plane back here to Chicago to live with my beloved mother and brother after a serious run in with a perverted male teacher we'll call Mr Momo Boyle, who I called a pervert and some other not so flattering things which got me launched from school, (who by the way and this is true story later turned out to be involved with young girls just as we all thought, prompting a massive local scandal and a belated 10 year apology from the school district in my direction)... went to John Hersey High then the University of Virginia, and the rest as they say is history, as I quickly straightened my young ass out and moved onward.
