ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A soccer fan in town for the St. Louis City SC and Sporting Kansas City got a surprise while sleeping. And it was not the good kind.
Debbie Andert and her husband decided to get a hotel room at the Pear Tree Inn next to CityPark instead of driving back to St. Peters after the City SC and Sporting KC playoff game.
Around 3:15 a.m. Monday morning, Andert said they heard a loud noise. She disregarded it at first an thought it was coming from other people staying in the hotel.
After falling back asleep, Andert woke up a few hours later to find something on her bed. She said she initially thought it was maybe an earring that had fallen out.
"It was a bullet," Andert said. "It was the shellcase of a bullet. And then I'm like wait, 'that was that noise?' And then I got up, and there was a hole in the wall right above my bed."
Debbie Wright Andert, Facebook
Andert said the bullet broke through the window, leaving a large hole and shredding the hotel curtain. Following the discovery, she went down and told the hotel manager, who she said seemed very apologetic.
After going back up to her hotel room, Andert didn't hear anything from the manager and thought this was something that needed to be reported. She said she assumed the manager was hurrying to report it.
"Then I went ahead and called the police, and then an hour and a half later nobody showed up. So then I called the dispatcher again," Andert said.
The dispatcher said they had Andert's information, and had cars they were sending out to the area but they were short on officers.
Last week, KMOX talked to St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy about officer shortages, specifically an instance of only two officers for one district on watch one day in late September.
Tracy seemed to downplay the shortages and said he classified them as 'isolated incidents.'
"When we have to move people around to protect downtown, protect people's rights under civil arrest, First Amendment Rights for free speech, we do move people around," Tracy said.
Once the police did show up to the hotel room Andert said they were thorough in helping her, but the hotel manager seemed surprised to see the officers.
"Then the manager was just kind of like, 'Oh, well I didn't know you called it in,'" Andert said. "I was like, 'Well, I would think you would've done that sir!'"
Andert and her husband were staying on the ninth floor of the hotel, and she said she wondered what would have happened if either of them got up to use the bathroom or even adjust the thermostat in the middle of the night.
"Easily, if we would have stood up, we were right in that... like the bullet would have went through us," Andert said. "Would have had us instead of the wall."
Andert posted photos from the incident on Facebook and said, "Not the way we wanted to end our night, two losses. Guess we [upset] a KC fan, we had a bullet shot through our hotel room around 315. True. Story. Start. #lucky #stl #crime." She said she is just grateful nobody was hurt, and that this won't keep her away from coming downtown for another soccer game.
