Ridgeview Apartments’ already notorious reputation grew even worse Tuesday night, when SWAT officers from the North County Police Cooperative stormed the site in Riverview Village to arrest a homicide suspect hiding out there.
News of the suspect’s arrest was announced via the public release of an interdepartmental memo from Tom Tumbrink, the village’s interim police chief, to Mayor Mike Cornell, the recently elected leader of the North County hamlet just north of St. Louis and west of the Mississippi River.
The events that led to the arrest of the suspect began August 20, when a resident of the apartment complex at 9640 Diamond Drive spoke to a Riverview police sergeant as to the suspect's whereabouts.
After confirming the information, the sergeant passed it on “to detectives with the North County Police Cooperative and the St. Louis County Police Department,” who secured a search warrant to access the apartment complex, according to Tumbrink’s memo. They found the suspect “hiding at the abandoned apartments” and were able to arrest him and “gain a confession.”
Riverview Police are withholding the name of the suspect, the homicide victim and the date when the victim died.
The arrest is only the latest chapter in Ridgeview Apartments’ tumultuous recent history.
Village police on Aug. 16 began taping notices on each of Ridgeview’s 84 unit doors informing occupants the apartment complex had been declared “unsafe for human occupancy” and that tenants had 30 days to relocate, or else “be removed immediately” at the end of that period.
During a village council meeting last week, Mayor Mike Cornell said the city won’t enforce the eviction order.
Evernest St. Louis ended its active management of Ridgeview in January. Since then, the apartment complex has become a magnet for uncollected trash, drug-dealing and squatters, according to tenants interviewed.
Only a few of the apartments are occupied by legitimate renters, while squatters have taken over the rest of the building, according to tenants interviewed.
The current owner of Ridgeview is a firm called Hughes Capital Management, of Reno, Nevada, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, according to attorney Elad Gross, outreach coordinator for the St. Louis Mediation Project, which works with landlords to help tenants avoid eviction.
Mike Fitzgerald can be reached at <[email protected]
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