ST. LOUIS, MO (May 2 , 2024) — A jury deliberated three hours before finding Thomas Kinworthy, 46, guilty of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of St. Louis Metropolitan Police Officer Tamarris Bohannon, 29, on August 29, 2020, in the 3700 block of Hartford Street in the City’s Tower Grove South neighborhood. Kinworthy was also found guilty of armed criminal action and assault for shooting and seriously wounding Officer Arlando Bailey, 33, and a homeless man.

Kinworthy, a convicted felon on the run from a warrant in Florida, had come to St. Louis on August 24, 2020, to visit his father, with whom he had not communicated in 13 years.

On the afternoon of August 28, 2020, Kinworthy randomly shot Mark Smith, a homeless man digging through dumpsters in the Tower Grove South neighborhood. Smith ran to the nearby home of Mary and Steven Haag and asked them to call 911. Mary Haag was making the emergency call when Kinworthy walked through the Haags’ unlocked front door and ordered her to hang up the phone. The Haags were able to escape out the back door, unharmed. Kinworthy then barricaded himself in a bathroom on the second floor of the house, armed with a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun.

Officer Bohannon and probationary Officer Daniel DeVasto were the first law enforcement officers to arrive on the scene. As they walked to the front of the Haags’ house, Kinworthy fired one shot through the bathroom window, striking Officer Bohannon in the head. His fellow officers ran to his aid and took him to a hospital where he died of his injury.

As more officers converged on the area, Kinworthy shot Officer Bailey in the leg as he attempted to take cover behind a parked vehicle. St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department negotiators spent nearly 10 hours at the scene, with snipers standing by, trying to persuade Kinworthy to give himself up and come out of the house. After Kinworthy cut off communications, a SWAT team deployed cannisters containing a chemical irritant, stormed the house, and captured Kinworthy.

The case was prosecuted by Chief of Homicide Mary Pat Carl, Violent Crime Unit Supervisor Tanja Engelhardt, and Assistant Circuit Attorney Adam Field. The penalty for first-degree murder is life in prison without parole.

“It is my hope that this verdict sends a message – to law-abiding citizens and criminals alike –  that whether it takes a week, a month, a year or more, justice will be served,” said Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore. “A dangerous, desperate felon who left a trail of chaos and despair behind him, will be where he belongs: in prison for the rest of his life. “

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