ST. LOUIS – The wife of a man who died from the May 16, 2025 tornado in St. Louis has filed a lawsuit that accuses the city’s emergency management and forestry agencies of withholding public records tied to the tornado response.
Rachel Baltazar filed the lawsuit on May 7, nearly one year since the death of her husband, Juan Baltazar.
Juan Baltazar died when a tree fell on his car on Grand Boulevard during the May 16 tornado. He was one of five people who died in St. Louis from injuries sustained in the tornado. Baltazar was 48 years old, a father of seven and a prominent food truck business owner.
According to the lawsuit, Baltazar’s family filed a public records requests through Missouri’s Sunshine Law to City of St. Louis Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) on Sept. 25, 2025 and to the St. Louis Forestry Division on Oct. 10, 2025, seeking information to clarify what happened and what should have happened prior to his death…