Does St. Louis Have a Serial Stop Sign Slasher?

To say St. Louis has a slightly contentious relationship with traffic signs is, perhaps, putting it mildly. When we're not ignoring them, we're often outright defying them — flipping U-turns where no U-turns are permitted and failing to yield when yielding is the law.

Commands to "stop" generally get the worst treatment of all. St. Louisans don't like stopping! When we see a red light, we hit the accelerator (for two, even three cars deep). When we see a stop sign, we just roll past it.

Even so, we were surprised to see a stop sign bisected  in Soulard earlier this month — someone sheered off half the sign, leaving it to declare only "ST".

This week, tipster Jae Morris let us know this bisection might be part of a disturbing trend. Morris captured a photo last week of a similarly halved stop sign on the Washington University School of Medicine campus, at the corner of Taylor Avenue and Nash Way. They emailed, "Do we have a serial sign slasher?!"

Eerily, while the first stop sign was missing an "OP," this one was missing a "ST" — as if some malicious malfeasant had plans to take half signs from two locations and create a new and somehow menacingly scarred hybrid. What madness!

Morris reports the half-sign was still evident this past Monday, August 14, but that  (shockingly) the city has since replaced it.

Police have yet to issue an APB on the sign slasher, but we'll be keeping a look out. After all, you never know what madness lurks in this half-naked city — or exactly how St. Louisans will torture those pesky stop signs next.



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