Mansur Ball-Bey

Mansur Ball-Bey, 18, was shot and killed by St. Louis Police Officers Kyle Chandler and Ronald Vaughan while they were serving a search warrant in the Fountain Park neighborhood on August 19, 2015. Police said Ball-Bey pointed a gun at officers as he ran out the back door of the home being searched; his family disputed he was armed at all. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce declined to charge either officer in June 2016, citing insufficient evidence to disprove self-defense. In February 2025, nearly a decade later, a federal jury in a wrongful death lawsuit rejected the officers' account, awarding Ball-Bey's family $18.75 million after deliberating for just 90 minutes. As of August 2025, the city still had not paid the judgment. No one has ever been criminally charged in Ball-Bey's death.

St. Louis, MO · St. Louis County

• 2015: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The search warrant, the shooting, and Ball-Bey's death, per the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department's Force Investigative Unit and the Circuit Attorney's public report.
• Officer Kyle Chandler fired the fatal shot; Officer Ronald Vaughan also fired but did not strike Ball-Bey.
• Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced in June 2016 that a criminal violation against either officer could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, citing a lack of an independent witness who contradicted the officers' account.
• A pistol was recovered in the backyard near a dumpster; an off-duty officer who witnessed the chase testified Ball-Bey tossed the weapon there, and police said his fingerprints were found on it.
• Ball-Bey's father filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in 2020 against the officers, the former police chief, and the city.
• A federal jury deliberated for approximately 90 minutes in February 2025 before awarding Ball-Bey's family $6.25 million in compensatory damages and $12.5 million in punitive damages, totaling $18.75 million; as of the case's tenth anniversary in August 2025, the city had not yet paid the judgment.

• Whether Ball-Bey pointed a weapon at officers before he was shot, as police maintained, or was unarmed at that moment, as his family long argued, was never resolved by any criminal proceeding; the swift, decisive federal civil verdict against the officers a decade later suggests a jury did not find the police account credible, though that verdict addressed civil liability, not criminal guilt.
• Whether the recovered pistol was in fact Ball-Bey's or was, as some attorneys and community members alleged based on the officers' prior history, planted evidence has never been independently established.
• Why federal records showed Ball-Bey had not been to his job in at least 24 hours before the shooting, contradicting an early account that he had just come from work, has not been explained.

• St. Louis Public Radio — “Officers will not face charges in death of Mansur Ball-Bey”
• St. Louis Public Radio — “10 years and $19M later, Mansur Ball-Bey's family is still fighting St. Louis for justice”
• KSDK — “Mansur Ball-Bey St. Louis police shooting lawsuit: jury awards $18M to family”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs