Attorney Jonathan Beck has lived and worked in the City of St. Louis for almost 20 years — but a recent letter from the city’s Building Division has him for the first time mulling taking his business elsewhere.
Beck’s office has been on the corner of Magnolia and Arkansas avenues in Tower Grove East since 2011 (and has been in the neighborhood since 2004). Last week, on Wednesday night, the building burst into flames. The fire, captured on a nearby surveillance camera, shows the flames steadily build for a little more than a minute before suddenly bursting out over the sidewalk.
Beck says he is pretty sure he knows who set the fire and he has passed that person’s information along to the police. So far he’s gotten nothing from them.
“We’re waiting on the police to go there and take samples,” Beck says, alluding to the possible presence of an accelerant like gasoline. “Which maybe they’ll do, maybe they won’t do. We have a potential piece of evidence that needs to be fingerprinted. No response from the police on that.”
A video shows the shocking blaze: