Emily Valentine

A teenage girl was shot and killed Tuesday in south St. Louis, according to police. Emily Valentine, 15, was shot in the face shortly before 8 p.m. in the 3700 block of Minnesota Avenue in the city's Gravois Park neighborhood, police said. She was found on a parking pad in an alley, according to police and bystanders. She was pronounced dead at a hospital. John Johnson told the Post-Dispatch he was outside a home with friends when the shooting happened in a nearby alley. “We just heard five to six shots, then a little girl came running,” he said. “We didn’t see no car, nobody seen nothing.” The girl, who Johnson said was with Valentine, came asking for help. Valentine was still alive, Johnson said, when police were first called. Shay Abercrombie has lived in the area for a while and told the Post-Dispatch the neighborhood is mostly quiet. Valentine lived in the 5900 block of Floy Avenue in the city's North Pointe neighborhood.