Teen in clown costume stabbed elderly man to death at bus stop and whispered warning in eerie doorbell video, officials say

By Rebekah Riess, CNN

(CNN) — It looked like a scene from a horror film: A figure dressed in a baggy black and red clown outfit, their face partially covered, approaching a Ring camera late at night, glaring into the lens and whispering a warning, “I’m looking for you.” But the encounter was not just an elaborate scare.

Illinois State Police say the person wearing a clown costume in video circulating online is a 15-year-old boy in custody in connection with a fatal stabbing of an elderly man in East St. Louis.

East St. Louis police responded to the residential neighborhood east of Interstate 255 around 10 p.m. Monday after receiving a report of a body in the roadway.

St. Clair County Coroner Calvin Dye Sr. identified the victim as 78-year-old John Wesley Allen Sr., and said he had been stabbed multiple times. Allen had been waiting at a bus stop when he was stabbed in a “random attack” by the teen suspect wearing a clown costume, state police said.

Less than an hour before Allen’s body was discovered, a Ring camera recorded the suspect outside a home three blocks from the scene.

Neighbors described an alarming scene that night: Someone moving between homes, peering through windows and carrying a large knife, CNN affiliate KSDK reported. Police are reviewing purported footage of the person in the clown costume and collecting additional surveillance video.

“I’m thinking he’s going to kill everybody in the house the way he came,” Lee Palmer, whose mother’s Ring camera recorded the footage, told KSDK. He said he’s glad his mother, who is elderly and lives alone, did not open the door.

Authorities identified the teen and took him into custody at a home late Monday night. He faces a first-degree murder charge in the fatal stabbing of the victim with a knife.

Allen was a navy veteran and retired bus driver, his family told CNN affiliate KSDK.

“My uncle has been driving buses over 35 years, and this is the first time ever something happened to him,” said Allen’s niece, Tenia Stanford.

The man – who was lovingly referred to as “baby boy” because he was the youngest of six siblings – was a loyal churchgoer who spent his life serving others, the family said.

“He’s the best brother that someone took away,” his sister, Marie Stanford, told KSDK through tears. “I’m going to miss him.”

Allen, who lived in a senior living complex in St. Louis, had gone to the VA hospital for a checkup Monday before planning to visit his sister – who lives near the bus stop where he was attacked, Marie Stanford said.

Tenia Stanford described him as an “amazing man.”

“He was an uncle that you could talk to, you could call,” she told KSDK.

On Monday night, Allen was identified by the hospital bracelet still on his wrist, his family said.

As Allen’s loved ones make funeral arrangements, they are struggling to understand why the random act of violence happened.

“I’m just wondering why this person did this. He didn’t know my brother,” Marie Stanford said.

“Now we have to sit here and go through this pain and suffering because of some random act?” Tenia Stanford said.

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