Suspect charged in death of St. Louis hotel manager

A 43-year-old man was charged Sunday with fatally shooting a hotel manager during a violent 24-hour span last week in St. Louis in which six other people were killed.

Joseph B. Bowens faces one count of first-degree murder in Thursday's killing of Scott Knopfel at a Drury Inn & Suites hotel, said Poplar Bluff Police Chief Danny Whiteley. The 50-year-old Knopfel was one of the seven people killed from Wednesday night through Thursday afternoon in unrelated crimes. Bowens, who also is charged with first-degree robbery and two counts of armed criminal action, is jailed in Butler County on $500,000 cash only bond. Whiteley said he didn't know whether an attorney had been assigned to Bowens.

Officials in St. Louis, which has about 320,000 residents, have decried the violence. Even though St. Louis recorded 159 homicides in 2014, seven homicides in 24 hours was unusual. Besides Bowens, three other suspects have been charged.

Police said Knopfel was shot in the head after he struggled with his assailant while opening a cash drawer. Surveillance video shows the suspect, whom the manager mistook for a patron, entering the hotel and leaving less than 30 seconds later.

Whiteley said Bowens was arrested Saturday night in Poplar Bluff on unrelated drug and traffic charges after a car suspected of being used in the robbery was spotted outside his former wife's home. Officers stopped the former wife when she left the home because officers thought Bowens might be in her car, Whiteley said. Although Bowens wasn't with her, he called his former wife on her cellphone during the stop and police began negotiating with him to surrender, Whiteley said.

Bowens, who has been convicted in a series of drug and other crimes, gave himself up peacefully in the house next to his ex-wife's house, where friends lived, Whiteley said.