Police said a 13-year-old was arrested near the school after gunfire in a parking lot left one Brittany Woods Middle School student dead and another wounded as a 20-school meet was ending.
FERGUSON, Mo. — A 13-year-old boy was charged April 1 in the fatal shooting of another student after a track meet at the STEAM Academy at McCluer South-Berkeley, where police said gunfire broke out in the parking lot as athletes and families were leaving.
The case moved quickly from a chaotic school-event shooting to a juvenile court prosecution, but major questions remained unanswered by April 4. Police publicly identified the boy who died as LaJuan Swopes, a Brittany Woods Middle School student, and said another student was wounded. The accused also is 13 and was charged in St. Louis County Family Court with second-degree murder, first-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon and two counts of armed criminal action. Investigators said they were still trying to pin down what touched off the gunfire and whether online exchanges played a role.
The shooting happened Tuesday, March 31, at the end of the Rod Staggs Freshman-Sophomore Track and Field Invitational, an event that the Ferguson-Florissant School District said involved 20 schools. Police said the meet began at 4 p.m. and the shooting took place shortly after 7 p.m. in the parking lot of the STEAM Academy at McCluer South-Berkeley High School on Brotherton Avenue. Officers found two wounded boys and took a 13-year-old suspect into custody about two blocks away, police said, adding that officers also recovered a gun. Patricia Washington of the Ferguson Police Department said there was no active threat to the community after the arrest. The district said the gunfire erupted as people were leaving the event, which meant the scene shifted in seconds from a routine school competition to an emergency crowded with students, coaches, parents and officers.
By the next day, the known facts had become clearer, even as the motive remained murky. Ferguson police said one victim, LaJuan Swopes, died after he was shot. Another boy was hospitalized with serious injuries. First Alert 4 later reported that the injured student was expected to make a full recovery. The accused juvenile’s name was not released because of his age. Authorities have not publicly said how many shots were fired, exactly where each boy was standing when the shooting started, or whether there had been a physical fight just before the gunfire. First Alert 4 reported that police were looking at social media as a possible source of the dispute. The station also reported that a track coach, Aleese Roberts, said on Facebook that she saw a crowd forming, tried to break up a fight and then witnessed the shooting before helping one victim in the aftermath. That account has added to the picture of confusion around the final moments, but police had not publicly laid out a full timeline by Saturday.
The school and district response showed how widely the shooting reached beyond the parking lot. Officials said none of the students from the Ferguson-Florissant School District were involved, even though the shooting happened on one of its campuses. Spectrum News and First Alert 4 reported that both victims attended Brittany Woods Middle School in the University City district. Superintendent Sharonica Hardin-Bartley told district families that the school system’s “hearts are with the family and loved ones of the student we lost, with the injured student and their family, and with every student, staff member and community member who was present or has been touched by this loss.” The district said its trauma response team was at Brittany Woods on April 1 to support students and staff. Ferguson-Florissant officials also said they added security when students returned to class, and Spectrum reported that the Ferguson mayor, police chief, fire chief and other local leaders were on hand to greet students that morning.
The personal details that emerged after the shooting gave the case more weight than the charge sheet alone. Lisa LaGrone, a gun violence advocate interviewed by First Alert 4, said she had known LaJuan his whole life and said the boys involved knew one another. She described LaJuan as a good kid who stayed busy, helped relatives clean houses, cut grass with family members in summer and was looking ahead to graduation and his birthday. She also said his death landed on a family already carrying earlier loss after his father was killed in 2020. In separate local coverage, friends and relatives described LaJuan as being about a month from turning 14, a detail that helped explain why some early reports, including the first version carried by out-of-state stations, listed him as 14 before local outlets corrected his age to 13. That correction mattered because it made plain just how young everyone in the case was: the boy who died, the boy who was hurt and the boy accused of pulling the trigger were all middle-school age or close to it.
The legal posture is serious even though the case is still early. The accused was charged April 1 in St. Louis County Family Court, not adult criminal court, and the public record reviewed by April 4 did not show a publicly announced hearing date or a decision on whether prosecutors might seek to move the case into the adult system. The filed counts, second-degree murder, first-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon and two armed criminal action charges, give investigators room to proceed on both the fatal shooting and the wounding of the second student while they continue building the case. Police have not publicly described forensic evidence, witness statements or surveillance footage in detail. They also have not said whether the gun belonged to the accused or how he got it. Those missing pieces are likely to shape the next phase of the case, because juvenile proceedings often keep more information from public view than adult court filings do. For now, the clearest procedural fact is that the suspect is in custody and the investigation remains active.
The scene in the days after the shooting carried the strain of a school community trying to continue while dealing with violence attached to an ordinary event. Students returned to a campus that had hosted a track meet one evening and a homicide investigation the next morning. Community leaders stood outside schools. Parents tried to sort through what their children had seen. LaGrone said she heard doctors trying to save LaJuan and later listened to his mother ask whether the family would need security at the funeral. Daniel Williams, a board member with Breaking Generational Poverty, told First Alert 4 that the community needs more people reaching young teens before arguments turn into shootings. His remarks did not answer the central question of what happened in the parking lot, but they captured the broader fear that grew around the case: that a dispute involving very young teenagers could turn deadly in a public place packed with students from across the area. That fear, as much as the court filing, is what gave the story its force across north St. Louis County.
As of April 4, police had identified LaJuan Swopes as the student who was killed, said another student was recovering and kept a 13-year-old suspect in custody on murder and assault charges. The next milestone is expected to be a juvenile court appearance or another public update from investigators on motive, evidence and the path of the case.
Author note: Last updated April 4, 2026.