Investigators said at least one person was detained, but they believe more people were involved in the gunfire that killed two men.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — St. Louis police were searching for additional suspects Saturday night after gunfire outside a smoke shop in the Carr Square neighborhood killed two men and wounded three other people, authorities said.
The case began as a report of multiple people shot in the 1300 block of Cass Avenue at about 3:45 p.m. and quickly grew into a homicide investigation. Police said five people were shot after an argument broke out among a large group gathered outside the business. Two men died at the scene. Another victim was hospitalized in critical but stable condition, and two others reached hospitals in private vehicles before investigators had a full account of everyone who had been hit. The result was both a crime scene and a broader search for shooters, witnesses and evidence.
Police said the first officers to arrive found three victims still at the scene. Two of those men were pronounced dead there, while the third was taken to a hospital. The department later said the total number of people shot was five, meaning investigators had to account for two additional wounded people who were no longer on Cass Avenue when patrol officers first moved in. That detail matters in cases like this because it can complicate the early timeline, delay witness interviews and leave detectives working from scattered pieces of information in the first critical hours.
The department’s preliminary investigation said a large group had been gathered outside the smoke shop when an argument began. From there, police said, multiple people opened fire. Authorities did not say how many guns they believe were used, how many shots were fired or whether any of the wounded were bystanders. They also did not release the names or ages of the dead and injured in their first public account. Even so, the statement that more than one person fired shifted attention toward a wider suspect pool and raised the prospect of several people leaving the scene before officers arrived.
At least one person was detained, police said, but officers also said they believed more suspects remained outstanding. Homicide detectives were requested, signaling that the case had moved into a more detailed investigative stage with interviews, forensic work and evidence review. In the absence of announced charges, the detention left open several possibilities. The person being held could be a suspected shooter, someone tied to the argument, or a witness whose account investigators wanted to secure quickly. Police did not answer those questions in the initial reports.
The shooting happened in Carr Square, a small neighborhood north of downtown where the city’s 2020 census count showed 2,236 residents. The area is tightly bounded and heavily connected to nearby downtown traffic, businesses and public housing blocks, which can make a major daytime crime scene especially visible to residents and passersby. Saturday’s violence unfolded in midafternoon rather than late at night, a detail that can widen the number of potential witnesses and increase the chance that businesses or nearby properties captured parts of the confrontation on surveillance video.
For investigators, the unanswered questions are now central. Police have not publicly said what sparked the argument, whether the dead were among those exchanging gunfire, or whether the two people who left in private vehicles were hurt before or after the main burst of shooting. They also have not said whether the smoke shop itself was involved in any way beyond being the location outside which the gathering took place. Those gaps are common in the opening stage of a homicide case, when witness statements often conflict and detectives work to match accounts to physical evidence.
What comes next is likely to be a methodical effort to stabilize the witness list and narrow the suspect count. Detectives will be looking for video, ballistics evidence and hospital interviews that can help establish who fired first, who returned fire and how the five victims fit into the confrontation. Prosecutors typically would wait for that picture to sharpen before announcing charges in a case involving possible multiple shooters. Until then, the public record remains limited to the core facts police disclosed Saturday: a daytime argument, a smoke shop on Cass Avenue, five people shot, two men dead and a search that is still active.
Author note: Last updated March 22, 2026.