ST. LOUIS – Community members are gathering to tell city officials that not enough is being done after an unhoused woman was found dead near City Hall on Tuesday.

A memorial was held Thursday between Tucker and 14^th streets in downtown St. Louis. Some who gathered knew her as Jennifer. 

“Some of them are grieving friends here,” Reverend Larry Rice of New Life Evangelistic Center said. “They did everything they could for her, and their hearts are broken. I mean, those are human beings here, and when one of their own dies like that—it crushes them.”

Mayor Tishaura Jones released a statement following the woman’s death, saying excess city-funded beds were available and that the Department of Human Services will continue to work to bring people out of the cold in the upcoming days.

The city offers space at 1520 Market St. for those who need to warm up, but there are no shelters for unhoused individuals within city limits. Other warming sites, like libraries, have limited hours with no overnight access.

“She was the best of us—one of the best people I ever met in my entire life,” one person said of the woman. “I got stabbed multiple times, and she held me together until the ambulance got here… it’s crazy because $50 would have saved her life. $50 to get her into a hotel room to save her life—that’s all it would have took.”