Suspect arrested in shooting, robbery after Cardinals game

ST. LOUIS _ A suspect was arrested Tuesday in the downtown St. Louis shooting of Christopher Sanna, but the “coulda, woulda, shoulda” scenarios will continue to haunt the victim.tmpplchld Sanna has retraced the hypotheticals ever since he was shot and possibly paralyzed Friday during a robbery as he and his girlfriend walked to their car after a St. Louis Cardinals game.tmpplchld We could have gone right instead of left.tmpplchld We should have walked another way.tmpplchld We could have waited for a crowd with whom to walk.tmpplchld “It’s unbelievable,” he said in a telephone interview from his hospital bed. “Just like that, and now I can’t walk.”tmpplchld Sanna said he felt a sense of relief after learning that police arrested a suspect in his case.tmpplchld Police sources said store surveillance footage captured a man using Sanna’s credit cards. Police learned Tuesday that the man had been in the St. Louis County Justice Center in Clayton since Sunday.tmpplchld St. Louis County police had arrested him on unrelated domestic violence charges after his girlfriend told police he punched her in the face and stomach at a home in Spanish Lake at about 1:28 a.m. Sunday. The victim told police she and man had a child in common and that he had a gun. Police found a 9mm handgun in his car, according to court documents.tmpplchld The man has previous felony convictions for resisting arrest and first-degree assault, according to the documents. Court records show he also has convictions for fraud with a credit card and driving with a revoked driver’s license.tmpplchld Candis Sanna said she is comforted to know a suspect is in custody for her son’s shooting. She’s hoping it will help her son’s girlfriend sleep better at night.tmpplchld “She’s been so terrified that she has slept with all the lights on in her home,” she said. “We can’t believe it, it’s such a blessing and relief to think that if this is the person, someone else isn’t going to suffer.”tmpplchld The experience has made Candis Sanna believe the city needs to put up more surveillance cameras downtown.tmpplchld “We need a camera on every corner,” she said. “When we are having the kind of violence that we’ve had here since Ferguson, and it’s not just here, it’s everywhere, we have to do something.tmpplchld “I only hope that out of this nightmare that we’ve had, something good will happen.”tmpplchld tmpplchld She said the support perfect strangers have offered her has been overwhelming, especially when she has returned to the spot where her son was shot.tmpplchld “I have been stopped by people on the street, hugging me and telling me how sorry they are and all I can think of is, ‘This is your neighborhood and you can’t go out at night without worrying about getting mugged or robbed. I only have to worry about it when I go to work downtown or to a Cardinals game.”tmpplchld tmpplchld Christopher Sanna said the company he works for, Midas, is planning to outfit him with a handicapped accessible van and allow him to keep his job.tmpplchld “I ran their No.1 shop for the past three years,” he said.tmpplchld Sanna was shot about 10:30 p.m. Friday at Walnut Street and Memorial Drive. He and his siblings had been at the Cardinals game to celebrate his mother’s 60th birthday.tmpplchld Sanna and his girlfriend left the game at the start of the ninth inning Friday because he had to work Saturday morning. The rest of the family stayed for the game and to watch the postgame fireworks.tmpplchld Sanna had parked at the Old Cathedral parking lot and was walking to his car. According to police, two men in a dark-colored sedan drove up to Sanna and his girlfriend. The driver got out with a gun and demanded their belongings. The woman gave the gunman her purse, and the couple turned to run away. That’s when the gunman fired several shots in their direction, hitting Sanna in the back.tmpplchld “He was just waiting for an unsuspecting person that was blind to what was going on around us,” he said.tmpplchld “The sad part about it is, I’ll never forget how I was in such good spirits,” he said. “It was just me and my girl skipping to our car hand-in-hand and we weren’t paying attention to our surroundings.”tmpplchld Sanna said he remembers seeing the suspect get out of a car holding a handgun with both arms. He believes it was originally pointed at the ground. Then, he heard a shot.tmpplchld “As I get hit, I say to her in a panic, ‘I can’t feel my legs!’” he recalled. “It was like I couldn’t figure out what was going on quick enough. As I was laying on my back, she was running around shouting, ‘Oh my God, Oh my God, he shot him, he shot him.’”tmpplchld Sanna said he rarely ventures downtown.tmpplchld “Downtown restaurants? I’ve never seen them,” he said. “Crime is just really out of hand. It’s just scary.”tmpplchld tmpplchld He prides himself as being aware of his surroundings, and blames himself for not noticing the suspect’s car approaching.tmpplchld “I maybe had two of those $10 beers, so maybe I could have caught it a lot sooner,” he said. “I’m a very skeptical type of person and I know when something doesn’t look right.”tmpplchld He remembers seeing cars that he now wishes he and his girlfriend would have taken cover between.tmpplchld He remembers seeing a group of people walk past him moments after the shooting, unaware of what just happened. He believes he would have been safer had he waited to walk with them.tmpplchld But going downtown that night aren’t among the regrets that have haunted him from that night.tmpplchld “It was my mother’s 60th birthday,” he said. “And I wasn’t going to miss it.”tmpplchld ___tmpplchld (Staff writer Joel Currier contributed to this report)tmpplchld ___tmpplchld (c)2015 St. Louis Post-Dispatchtmpplchld Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.comtmpplchld Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.tmpplchld