ST. CHARLES — A body was pulled from the Missouri River on Tuesday, two days after the man ran from a stolen vehicle on the Blanchette Bridge and jumped over a bridge railing, police said.
The Missouri Highway Patrol identified the man as 23-year-old Montez Patterson of St. Louis.
About 5:40 a.m. Sunday, a trooper on eastbound Interstate 70 came upon a vehicle stopped on the Blanchette Bridge. The officer at first thought it might be a stranded motorist. Patterson was in that vehicle, said patrol Cpl. Logan Bolton.
When a trooper stepped out of his patrol car to approach the car, another vehicle quickly pulled up alongside, Bolton said. Patterson crawled out through the car’s window and jumped into the second vehicle.
The car drove just a short distance down the bridge, then Patterson and another man ran from the car and jumped over the bridge railing, Bolton said.
Both vehicles, it turns out, had been stolen, Bolton said.
One of the men survived. Police found him hiding in the bridge girders. That man, 21, of St. Louis, was arrested on suspicion of first-degree tampering and resisting arrest. He told officers that his accomplice, Patterson, had fallen into the water.
On Tuesday morning, Patterson’s body was spotted floating in the river, near the St. Charles County shoreline and the Ameristar Casino. Crews with the St. Charles Fire Department recovered the body and brought him to shore at a boat ramp just north of the casino, said fire district spokesperson Capt. Kelly Hunsel.
