When 39-year-old Shirley Howard and her 2-year-old son Amir were struck by a driver on Jan. 20, much of St. Louis had been immobilized by winter weather for more than 15 days. Walloped by a pair of winter storms early in the month followed by oscillating temperatures that rapidly froze snowmelt into thick sheets of ice, many of the sidewalks in her north St. Louis neighborhood had been rendered all but impassable to pedestrians — including the sidewalk next to West Florissant avenue, a busy four-lane arterial just steps from the mother of four's home.
Police believe those conditions left Howard no choice but to push her youngest son's stroller in an unprotected bike path as they made their way to a nearby corner store — and put them directly in the path of a driver who departed his lane. Shirley was killed on the scene; Amir sustained devastating injuries — including a fractured skull, punctured lungs, a bleeding liver, and broken arms and legs — when he was ejected from his stroller. He remains hospitalized in critical condition, and the family has set up a GoFundMe to offset his medical costs and her funeral expenses.
After striking the family, the driver — an 80-year-old man who has not been identified by the police — ran through a snowbank that neighbors say was created by the city's plows, then struck a nearby home. He has not yet been charged, though the police say the investigation is ongoing.
Shirley's grieving siblings, though, have been left wondering whether someone else will be cited for their role in the horrifying crash as well: the property owners who failed to clear the sidewalk. And they're also questioning whether the city of St. Louis should be held accountable for relying on private property owners to do what some feel should have been the government's responsibility all along.
"I know that when you speak with the city, they will say that is an 'act of nature,' or this and that," said Shanika Johnson, Shirley's sister. "But where is the enforcement to ticket the homeowners who are required to clean their sidewalks? ... There were no citations issued that I know of — and even if there were, I mean, we're looking at weeks [between] the time that we got the snow storm and when my sister was killed. That whole sidewalk was clearly impacted with ice. Were there citations issues to get these folks out there — or even to help for folks that are elderly? Because it's not just on them [for not] getting out there."
Broken policy, deadly results
Like countless communities across America, St. Louis's policy on winter sidewalk clearance is vague and confusing to residents, whom the city technically holds responsible for clearing pedestrian paths next to properties they own, but rarely fines for non-compliance. When an owner can't or simply doesn't shovel, the city Streets Department directs residents to "Be a good neighbor and help out ... by clearing their sidewalks, too, if you are able," but doesn't specify when those neighbors should take action, or how the sidewalk will be cleared if they don't.
Area personal injury lawyers, meanwhile, have told local news that homeowners aren't legally required to clear sidewalks, and can even be held legally liable if their choice to "pile snow that later freezes into ice" creates dangerous conditions for walkers. If homeowners simply leave the snow in its "natural state", though, attorneys say they likely won't face liability — even if that unplowed snow freezes, too.
As a result, many St. Louisans say their city consistently becomes treacherous for people outside cars after a heavy snowfall — especially in communities with high rates of vacancy or absentee landlords, high percentages of older residents with disabilities that make shoveling hard or impossible, or high rates of poverty that put private plowing services out of reach.
The predominantly Black St. Louis neighborhood where Shirley Howard lived and died had all three features. And even when neighbors did band together to clear the walks, the city sometimes erased their work by plowing snow from the driving lane up over the curb — and that's if the city plowed anything at all, since the Streets Department's long-standing policy has been to leave most side streets untouched until ice melts on its own.
West Florissant Avenue, where Shirley and Amir were struck, is one of the few arterial snow routes on the city's predominantly Black north side, and neighbors say the city's own plows contributed to making the sidewalk impassable. It's also routinely ranked among the city's top five crash corridors; eight collisions involving pedestrians happened on it in 2023 alone.
"All my neighbors along my block complain about it, because we do shovel our snow," said Fraunzell Howard, Shirley's brother. "But when they do the streets, the city pushes all that snow back onto the sidewalk. I'm a bus rider myself; I catch the bus, I walk, I get to work. And [after] this recent winter storm, I literally had to walk in the street myself just get to the bus stop because the sidewalks were too bad to even walk on — let alone my sister, who was pushing a stroller with her to the store."
Experts say that's an unfortunately common situation in many U.S. cities, and that there are few resources on how to best replace policies that leave sidewalks impassable even long after it snows — or even to enforce those imperfect policies without penalizing low-income and disabled residents who truly can't plow.
"Let’s compare it to enforcement of parking ordinances," suggested Mike McGinn, executive director of the nonprofit America Walks. "If your meter runs out, you’re going to get a ticket; if you park your car somewhere it's not supposed to be, it's going to get towed. Cities know how to enforce rules when they want to do it — and when they have some type of back up system to deal with folks who can’t take care of [their responsibilities] for legitimate reasons. ... They’re worried about backlash; they don’t want the burden of actually enforcing these rules."
Fraunzell, who described his sister as his best friend, has been struggling to accept that Shirley's story hasn't prompted a more visible conversation about how the city could do better by its walkers.
"Everyone does not have a car, and everyone does not get around in the car," he added. "But everybody uses their legs and feet — and most people [in this neighborhood] use their legs and feet and buses to get around. I just feel like the plan was not all the way thought out."
'The city is not going to care too much'
In the days since their sister's death, both Fraunzell and Shanika have reflected on how the city's flawed transportation policies shaped her life before the crash that ended it — and why those policies often hit women, people of color, people with disabilities, and caretakers the hardest.
Shirley, who could not drive because of an epilepsy diagnosis and cared for her 59-year-old mother and four children between the ages of 2 and 20, belonged to all of those groups. Both of her siblings, though, described their sister as a strong and tenacious woman who worked hard to meet her family's needs despite relying on a combination of ride share and St. Louis's struggling bus system, which received a D+ grade for reliability in an independent analysis last year.
When the paths to the bus stop iced over this January, though, even ultra-resourceful Shirley struggled to get around. When Shanika took custody of Shirley's 5-year-old son, Adonis, after her sister's death, she learned he hadn't been to school in a week.
"I get why she couldn't take him, because everywhere was ice," Shanika added. "Even on the side streets, not just the sidewalks — even the streets were still full of ice."
A mountain of research has shown that parents and caregivers are among those who suffer the most when cities fail to keep their sidewalks in good order, and that those caregivers are disproportionately women. One study from snowy Sweden, for instance, found that 79 percent of pedestrian injuries occurred in winter, and that 69 percent of those injuries happened to people who identified as female; another found that hospital care and lost productivity due to incidents caused by slippery conditions cost the Swedish government four times as much as simply paying to keep roads clear.
In the U.S., of course, a largely privatized healthcare system often shifts the costs of winter weather injuries onto residents — and helps create a culture where governments can duck responsibility for keeping walkers safe.
That's doubly true in marginalized communities, whose voices often go unheard when they demand better. Black and low-income people both disproportionately suffer the burdens of traffic violence, and are also over-represented among both paid and unpaid caregivers that struggle to push strollers or wheelchairs when roads are too icy to do it safely; people with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by car crashes and poor winter maintenance, too, and some might even find themselves homebound after a bad storm. The ZIP code where Shirley Howard lived has a 90 percent Black population and a median household income of just $35,000, or just two-fifths of the average household in the larger St. Louis metro.
"These are [high] poverty areas, so the city is not going to care too much about them," added Fraunzell. "But I just feel like that the city could have done a little bit more as far as helping. ... Some people don't always have money to pay someone to shovel their snow. The way life is nowadays, the bills are going up; everything is so expensive."
'They knew the storm was coming'
Of course, some communities have done a lot more to keep walkers safer in winter — and others can, too.
Cities like Burlington, Vermont, Rochester, and Duluth have all either taken full responsibility for plowing sidewalks or committed to supplementing property owner's efforts when storms are extreme; Holland, Mich. famously installed a snowmelt system under the sidewalks that melts snow on key routes before it has a chance to accumulate and freeze. Others, like Minneapolis, provide far clearer guidance on exactly when and how to plow, and government officials will remove snow themselves when property owners fail to do so, and send them a bill in the mail to cover the cost.
During his days as the mayor of Seattle, Mike McGinn committed city crews to digging out curb-cuts in downtown neighborhoods by hand — and after his time in office, he outlined other ideas that could help other mayors take action.
Still, he understands why so many don't.
"I think the best practice would be for cities take full responsibility," he added. "But the reason they don’t want to do that is because it would be expensive, and they already feel like they can’t take care of their existing arterial roadways. And I say 'arterial roadways' for a reason; there are lots of places where they say they don’t even have money to repair residential roadways for drivers. [And they say], 'Now want to add sidewalks to that list?' And they stop right there."
St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones's spokesperson Rasmus Jorgensen told Streetsblog that "it’s become clear that the city’s long-time policy for how snow and ice are cleared needs to be updated," and pledged to "take a comprehensive look at our snow removal ordinances and introduce updated legislation for next session."
For Shirley Howard's family, though, that action will come to too late to save their loved one, who they described as a warm and loving mother and daughter, a strong and independent woman, and the kind of person who would meet a stranger once and quickly strike up a friendship that you'd think had lasted for years.
"I'm hurt and I'm angry inside, because I know how beautiful a person my sister was, and she didn't deserve to die like that," added Fraunzell. "So I would like for them to not just say that they're going to do something — I would like for them to actually do it. And do it ahead of time — because they knew this storm was coming.
