Did the City of St. Louis do enough to deal with a homeless Sudanese couple who for almost four years lived in a makeshift yurt-like structure on a South City sidewalk? That’s the question a jury will have to decide this week.
Monday saw opening arguments in the lawsuit brought by two Tower Grove South homeowners who for 44 months had Eisa Ali Agbar Nimir and Zerigha Osman Boia Agbar living on the sidewalk in front of their home. The pair had long been denizens of the general area when they showed up in front of Steven McClanahan and Richard Baumhoff’s home on South Spring in August 2020.
McClanahan says he remembers it was hot and he thought the couple was just cooling off under the shade of a tree. McClanahan, who works in information technology for a beverage company, thought there was a language barrier but did his best to communicate. “I said, ‘Keep moving eventually, but stay here until sundown,’” McClanahan testified. Yet the next morning the couple was still there, yelling at passersby on the sidewalk…