A 78-year-old man was likely making one of his regular, unannounced visits to his older sister when he tragically crossed paths with a knife-wielding teenager in a clown costume, the victim’s family said Friday.
John Wesley Allen was found dead Monday night in East St. Louis, Illinois, “in a random attack by a suspect wearing a clown outfit,” state police said.
The intersection where he was found is near a bus stop Allen would frequent for surprise visits with his sister Delores Fowler, the victim’s family said.
“He’d never make an appointment. He’d just call me and say, ‘Are you at home?’ Then I’d say, ‘Yeah, I’ll come get you at the MetroLink station or the bus stop,’” Fowler, 82, told NBC News.
Loved ones, who said Allen was a retired St. Louis bus driver, said they worried about Allen traveling on public transit alone, but the senior citizen enjoyed being out and about. Allen drove a bus for Metro Transit in St. Louis from 1977 until his retirement in 1994, according to the agency and his family.
“He was a very friendly person. He would talk to anybody. He just loved people,” Fowler said.
Allen was a widower who lived in a retirement community in nearby St. Louis. His wife, Yvonne Allen, was 65 when she died in 2019, according to public records and the victim’s loved ones.
A 15-year-old boy has been charged in connection with Allen’s killing. Police said there are no known previous connections between the victim and the suspect.
“We were always concerned about him coming over without calling, but he just enjoyed being with his sister,” said Allen’s niece, Tania Stanford, 49.
“He was a joyful person and he was loved. He was a friendly guy who would do anything. He’d give you the shirt off his back if he could,” Stanford said.
Allen’s loved ones only found out about the retired bus driver’s death from local news. Fowler said she didn’t believe her brother had been killed, even after hearing his partial name read on TV.
“Friends were asking me, ‘Is this John that we’ve been seeing (on local TV news), that somebody killed him?’” she said. “That’s when I turned the TV on and they said it was a ‘Wesley Allen’ and I said to myself, ‘Well, that’s not him. His name is John Wesley Allen.’”
East St. Louis police referred all calls about the killing to Illinois State Police, which is now leading the investigation. A spokesperson for the state authorities declined to comment Friday.
It wasn’t clear on Friday whether a lawyer had been hired or assigned to represent the suspect.
“We want him tried as an adult,” Fowler said. “He took a person’s life for no reason.”
