Slain officer the eighth shot in St. Louis this year

ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis police officer killed over the weekend was among eight officers who have been shot during an extraordinarily violent year in the city.

Officer Tamarris L. Bohannon,

29, died Sunday, a day after he was shot in the head. He leaves behind a wife and three children.

A 43-year-old white man is in custody but has yet to be charged. Bohannon was Black, as was a second officer who was shot in the leg and is expected to survive. That officer’s name has not been released.

“This is a horrific reminder of the dangers our brave men and women willingly face every day to keep us safe,” Mayor Lyda Krewson said in a statement, calling Bohannon’s death “a terrible, senseless tragedy.”

The city’s rate of killings in 2020 is on a near-record pace, and nonfatal shootings have spiked, too. Things are so dire that the federal government in early August sent 50 agents to battle crime.

Six other officers have been shot in addition to Bohannon and his colleague, including four struck during a violent June 1 protest that followed George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. Two of those officers were shot in the leg, one in the foot and one in the arm.

An officer was shot by a suspect with a sawed-off shotgun on July 26. Another was shot by a teenager on Aug. 2.

Among those officers, only Bohannon died.

Thirty-three officers have been shot to death in the U.S. this year, a 6 percent decrease from the Jan. 1 to Aug. 31 period last year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. An additional 32 officers died in traffic accidents, up 10 percent. Twenty-one officers have died this year during other incidents and job-related illnesses, down

40 percent.