ST. LOUIS — An 18-year-old man was charged with three counts of murder after police said he shot and killed three people – including a woman and her 8-year-old daughter – whom he did not know well within a few hours of each other in St. Louis Tuesday night into Wednesday.
Prinshun McClain was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and four counts of armed criminal action in connection with the deadly shootings.
The robbery charges are related to the deadly shooting of a mother and her daughter. Police sources said the victims were tied up in their own home and shot to death Wednesday afternoon.
The first woman, Tori Manisco, 26, was shot to death just before midnight Tuesday on the front porch of her home in the 1100 block of Dover Place in the Carondelet neighborhood in south St. Louis.
Officers did not find her until about 5:45 a.m. Wednesday.
Then, at about 3 p.m. Wednesday, a woman went to check on her 27-year-old daughter and 8-year-old granddaughter at their home in the Fairgrounds neighborhood on the city’s north side and found them tied up and shot to death.
St. Louis police confirmed the suspect in both homicide cases is in custody at a jail in Granite City on unrelated charges.
A police source familiar with the investigation told the I-Team interviews with neighbors and witnesses helped homicide detectives link the shootings to the same shooter, and the alleged shooter did not know the victims well. According to charging documents, he lived in the same apartment complex as the woman and her daughter.
The victim's mother said she ran down the stairs after finding her daughter and granddaughter killed and asked McClain to call police, not knowing he was the one suspected of pulling the trigger. He did call the police and to officers he did not hear anything even though the victims were shot multiple times.
The victim's mother said she noticed her daughter's three TVs near McClain's door while police investigated.
The source tells 5 On Your Side Manisco complained to friends and relatives about a man acting strangely toward her on the bus not long before her murder, which helped detectives identify the alleged shooter.
5 On Your Side has confirmed McClain pleaded guilty in June to second-degree robbery in Richmond Heights.
In that case, police say the man pulled a woman's hair and punched her in the head before taking her cellphone outside the University Club Tower office building along Brentwood Boulevard. A security guard saw the attack and intervened, according to court documents.
The man gave the cellphone back to the victim and ran away from the scene, but officers found him and he admitted to pulling the victim's hair and taking her phone. Surveillance cameras captured the attack, according to the documents.
He was sentenced to five years of probation and sent to the aggressive offender program with eight months of shock time in the Department of Justice Services. He was released after being given credit for time served.
Manisco was a student at Crossroads College Preparatory School, according to a memorial her brother, Tyler Manisco, wrote on social media.
“The sudden, senseless, absolute tragedy of her loss has struck all of us through the heart and we as a family are grieving her passing deeply,” he wrote.
Friends and family of the second victims, Terri Bankhead and her daughter Da’Nilya Edwards, told 5 On Your Side’s Robert Townsend that Bankhead was a certified nursing assistant and her daughter was going into second grade. Family members said they lived in an apartment near Pleasant and Penrose streets for only six months.
Police sources say the alleged shooter had a relative living in the area but did not know Bankhead or her daughter well.
This is a developing story that will be updated as 5 On Your Side confirms more details.