2 Pine Lawn officials describe assault at Board of Aldermen meeting

PINE LAWN — A Pine Lawn alderwoman says a man rushed forward to assault her after he and four or five allies had been "heckling" her from the audience at a Monday night board meeting.

"When I said 'you can go home,' Daniel Metts flew into a rage," Alderwoman Dionne Peeples-Jones said Wednesday in an email to the Post-Dispatch. "He and a crew of residents were disruptive in the meeting all night...as usual."

Metts, 36, was being held in the St. Louis County Jail Wednesday on charges of assaulting two Board of Aldermen members and two North County Police Cooperative officers and resisting arrest.

Peeples-Jones, 55, said she didn't require medical attention after police said Metts punched her about the head with a closed fist.

Alderman Tyrone Polk, 65, who was hit in the eye when he tried to separate the two, said he also wasn't seriously injured.

But the St. Louis County prosecutor's office said in court documents that Metts pushed one of the police officers into a podium with such force that the officer suffered multiple broken ribs and a hip injury. The officer was treated at a hospital and released, police said.

The other officer had minor knee injuries from the incident.

Peeples-Jones said she was delivering her ward report when the heckling began.

She said "they are angry with me" because she doesn't support getting rid of the North County cooperative as the city's contracted police service.

Metts' brother, aldermanic board president Gerald Metts, has disputed the police account of what happened at Monday's meeting. He said in an interview Tuesday that his brother didn't strike anyone but that Peeples-Jones hit his brother during the incident.

Peeples-Jones said Wednesday she doesn't recall hitting Daniel Metts during the melee but if she did, it was in self-defense.

Gerald Metts on Sept. 9 asked the board to reconsider the city's ongoing police service contract with the North County Police Cooperative. He did so just days after he was charged for driving under the influence following his arrest in June by officers with the cooperative, after a crash.

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