St. Louis Public Radio

On Friday’s St. Louis on the Air, we went Behind the Headlinesand the headlines this week reached all the way from Alexandria, Virginia, to Belleville, Illinois. We focused this week’s segment on the local connection to the shooting, which was perpetrated by a 66-year-old man from Belleville, James T. Hodgkinson.

We first spoke with U.S. Representative Mike Bost, of Illinois’ 12th District, of which Hodgkinson lived in. Bost said that the Capitol was shaken after the shooting. When he found out the shooter was from his home district, Bost’s team started searching for any previous communications.

“We wanted to make sure we hadn’t missed a sign, that we hadn’t failed in our duty to report,” Bost said. “He had communicated with us in the last seven months ten times, nine times by email, one time by telephone. No threats in there, nothing that showed he was going to do something.”