6 days ago
‘Possibly hundreds' of mail pieces found scattered on busy downtown St. Louis street
ST. LOUIS – A St. Louis radio personality found 'possibly hundreds' of pieces of mail scattered across a busy downtown street early Tuesday morning during her commute to work.
Debbie Monterrey, a longtime KMOX radio host, came across the scene around 4 a.m. Tuesday on 14th Street near its intersection with Clark Avenue, just steps from the Enterprise Center.
Monterrey shared a 15-second video clip of her experience with FOX 2, a news partner of KMOX, and reflected on the odd discovery Wednesday during 'The Chris and Amy Show' on KMOX.
'I'm just driving in how I do. And I get towards the light and I'm like 'What?,'' said Monterrey. 'At first I thought somebody knocked over a garbage can, but then I realized, this is mail. Then, as I started looking around, there was tons of it. And those bins, the sort of white corrugated bins they use for the mail, there were a couple of them smashed in the street and just some piles. Pretty significant piles and then just mail scattered everywhere.'
The video shows letters and parcels of various sizes, some in piles, spread out over several car lengths. Monterrey estimated there may have been hundreds of pieces of mail.
'I didn't know what to do because you can't call the post office at 4 in the morning. No one is answering the phone,' said Monterrey. 'I called 911 and no one answered the phone. I thought I don't know if I should call police, but someone needs to get the mail off and it's not my job. What am I going to do?'
Monterrey then headed to her office, and another co-worker who showed up shortly after informed her that someone, believed to be a mail worker, was cleaning up the mess.
So how did it get there? That remains unclear.
It's worth noting the U.S. Postal Service has a major St. Louis processing facility less than a mile away at 1720 Market Street.
'My theory here is it probably fell off a truck because it didn't look like stuff that was being delivered by a postal carrier,' said Monterrey. 'It looked like stuff that was being trucked somewhere else.'
FOX 2 reached out to a USPS spokesperson for comment, who provided this brief statement, but nothing more: 'We're making every effort to ensure all mail has been recovered and delivered timely.'
It's unclear how many pieces of mail may have been scattered or whether any deliveries were damaged or delayed.
FOX 2 will update if new information becomes available.
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