On Friday, the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office dismissed murder charges against two teenagers who were accused of committing the October 2021 drive-by shooting that killed 19-year-old Isis Mahr.
Mahr was in a car in the city's North Pointe neighborhood when, according to a police probable cause statement, Jalin Jefferson and Corey Hardy pulled up to the vehicle and opened fire. Mahr died; another individual in the car, who was injured, identified the shooters to police.
"She was caught in the crossfire of something I know she didn't have anything to do with," Isis Mahr’s grandmother Brenda Mahr tells the RFT. Brenda Mahr says her granddaughter volunteered at the Wohl Community Center and at her alma mater Cardinal Ritter College Prep, where she served as a student mentor and helped the soccer program. Trees have since been planted in her memory both at the school and in Forest Park.
Isis Mahr’s death led to hundreds of students marching against gun violence a few months after she was killed. The march began at Wohl and ended at Cardinal Ritter.
Despite the high-profile nature of the murder, the cases against Jefferson and Hardy crawled through the courts under former Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. Last October, a witness was killed.
"My problem with the prosecutor's office is that I spoke to them about providing witness protection for that young man," Brenda Mahr says. "And they told me they didn't have the money available.”
In January, the public defender representing Jefferson wrote in a court filing that he still hadn't received key evidence in the case from the prosecutor's office, despite filing a written request for it three months prior.
"So many mistakes were made initially in the case that I don't know that there's any more that the prosecution can do at this point," Mahr says.
Prosecutors met with Mahr at the courthouse in the city last Wednesday to tell her that the cases were being dismissed. The dismissals were filed on Friday.
Mahr spoke to the RFT just after that meeting with prosecutors. "I am concerned for my safety now that they'll be out, and for my family's safety," she said. "The last thing that I said to the group upstairs was if something happens to me, you should know where it comes from."
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