Rudy Boykins

Rudy Boykins, 50, was found shot to death on Nov. 30 behind a warehouse at 1514 North 13th Street in the city's Old North St. Louis neighborhood, police said. The ShotSpotter gunshot detection system, which uses microphones to detect gunfire, alerted police to a shooting there. St. Louis police Sgt. Charles Wall said the man died at the scene. Boykins was on the ground in "an otherwise unoccupied homeless encampment," police said in a brief summary, and had multiple gunshot wounds. Prosecutors later charged 26-year-old Joseph Baylark III, of the 1400 block of North 19th Street, with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in Boykins' death. After police released an image from a surveillance video, people who knew Baylark contacted authorities to identify him, police said. Police searched his home and found clothes seen in the video. Baylark also admitted in an interview to being the person in the video, but he initially denied killing Boykins. Authorities wrote in charging documents that he later admitted to the shooting.