Woman charged with shooting at teenagers violated bond by cutting ankle monitor
By Susan El Khoury
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ST. LOUIS, Missouri (KMOV) — A woman accused of shooting at teenagers outside a downtown St. Louis high school violated bond and cut her ankle monitor. It’s the latest case News 4 Investigates learned about as the I-team continues looking into growing concerns over how St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s Office handles cases.
News 4 Investigates obtained surveillance video of the December 2022 shooting. The video shows the woman shooting at teenagers before a principal tries to take the gun away from her. Additional video obtained by News 4 Investigates shows the principal and a security guard trying to hold the woman down.
The woman charged is 20-year-old Cierra Wealleans. She’s facing multiple felonies.
Wealleans was initially denied bond. Within a week of her arrest, Judge Clinton Wright released Wealleans on a sponsored personal recognizance bond and put her on 24/7 GPS monitoring.
Over the following weeks, court records show Wealleans broke bond multiple times. On Jan. 24, court records show that Wealleans cut off her ankle monitor.
The city contracts court monitoring to a private company, Total Court Services.
Records obtained by News 4 Investigates show Total Court Services warned the judge that Wealleans’ “device was disconnected.”
Saint Louis University Law Professor Anders Walker says tampering with court monitoring can lead to new charges in Missouri.
“It’s serious because you don’t know where this person is,” Walker said. “That is a class D felony which could be over a year in prison and should be an automatic bond revocation.”
Wealleans’ phone number listed in court records has been disconnected.
Wealleans’ defense lawyer, Nick Zotos, told News 4 that he was notified when it happened. Zotos claims that Wealleans was being threatened, and she threw away her ankle monitor. Zotos told News 4 that Wealleans was going to get a new monitor.
“If you’re defending someone and they violate bond that’s a problem so you should really get them to put that bracelet back on and make it clear this is just going to make it harder for you down the road,” Walker said.
It took weeks for the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office to notice Wealleans was off the grid. Prosecutors filed a motion Monday to revoke bond.
There are multiple ways judges can respond to a motion like that, including setting a hearing and issuing a warrant to arrest the person breaking bond.
In this case, Judge Rochelle Woodiest set a hearing to review bond for next month.
With the Circuit Attorney’s Office recently facing heightened attention for how it handles bond, Walker doesn’t think the timing is a coincidence.
“The pendulum is swinging back, so we went way in the direction of criminal reform, let everyone out, now we’re starting to see the ramifications of that and I think people are going to start getting tougher on crime,” Walker added.
News 4 Investigates reached out to the St. Louis Circuit Courts but were told judges won’t comment on anything relating to a pending case.
After News 4 started asking questions, Wealleans had her ankle monitor replaced on Tuesday.
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