{"id":805343,"date":"2026-08-07T04:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/805343\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T04:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:30:14","slug":"illinois-teen-in-clown-outfit-charged-with-murder-of-78-year-old-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/805343\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois teen in clown outfit charged with murder of 78-year-old man"},"content":{"rendered":"

A teenager accused of stabbing a 78-year-old man to death while dressed as a clown <\/a>was charged with murder Thursday, and the prosecutor wants to try him as an adult, Illinois officials said.<\/p>\n

John Wesley Allen was killed Monday in East St. Louis. He \u201cwas waiting at a bus stop when he was stabbed in a random attack by a suspect wearing a clown outfit,\u201d Illinois State Police said. <\/p>\n

The 15-year-old suspect, who was arrested after the stabbing, was charged Thursday with a count of first-degree murder, state police said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The teenager had \u201cthe intent to kill or do great bodily harm\u201d to Allen, who was stabbed \u201cabout the body with a knife, thereby causing\u201d his death, according to a court filing by St. Clair County Assistant State\u2019s Attorney Derek Smith.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s attorney is seeking to prosecute the teen as an adult on a first-degree murder charge, according to the court document.<\/p>\n

East St. Louis police were called for a report of a body in a roadway around 10 p.m. Monday and found Allen, of Jennings, Missouri, dead, state police said. <\/p>\n

The 15-year-old was located at a residence and arrested Monday, state police said. <\/p>\n

State police have said that video of the suspect wearing a clown costume is circulating and that they are seeking to obtain all video in the case.<\/p>\n

Doorbell camera video obtained by NBC affiliate KSDK<\/a> of St. Louis showed a person whose face was partly covered looking into the camera and saying, \u201cI have a gift for you.\u201d Neighbors told the station they saw a person going door to door with a large knife Monday night.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear Thursday whether the teenager, who remained in custody Thursday, had a defense lawyer to speak on his behalf. <\/p>\n

East St. Louis is across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A teenager accused of stabbing a 78-year-old man to death while dressed as a clown was charged with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-805343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}