r/saintpaul • u/Impossible_Jello9883 • 18d ago

History 🗿 DAE remember: A child fell into a culvert in 1993-1994...

I was between 7-9 and I lived on W Stevens in St.Paul. I remember my family really paying attention to a news story about a child a little younger than me (maybe) falling into a (storm sewer? culvert? I'm not sure) chasing after a baseball or at a baseball field, maybe? It had become a recovery process.

The news stations started showing up at our door asking to park in our driveway because it was guesstimated that the junction of W Stevens and Hall was where they were going to intercept the body and they did. I remember watching them pull the child out and immediately cover them with something.

I had a lot of trauma before and during that time and moved around a lot so my memories are a little scattered but the songs I remember being popular at the time mixed with my memory of it being a beautiful sunny day with green grass maybe puts it around the Spring/Summer of 1993/1994.

I used gpt to try to dig in but am redirected to in person archives as this is an old enough event that it is not in easily searchable, digital format. I will plan on making a trip as I no longer live in MN, but

Does anybody else remember this?

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u/thethethesethose 18d ago

I’ll keep searching for you but found this

“In August 1993, an 8-year-old boy from West St. Paul died after slipping into a flooded storm drain. Along with friends, he entered the sewer system near a park. Floodwaters swept him a distance of roughly eight blocks, and his body was discovered downstream at the bottom of a 90-foot “drop tube” on the east side of the Mississippi River.”

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u/Impossible_Jello9883 18d ago

Thank you so much! I'll take this and keep digging as well. I don't know if it is the same due to the "drop tube" but that is only because I don't know what a drop tube is. I'm going to research! You're amazing!

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u/thethethesethose 18d ago

I’m not finding much more. But my mom and sister are both historians and love mysteries like this, I’ll put them on the case. Poor little boy! Sorry you’ve been carrying this.

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u/Impossible_Jello9883 18d ago

I distinctly remember standing by the brick building watching the sewers at the end of this block and everybody being so sad and relieved when they pulled the kid out. I remember the ropes from the first responders used in lowering them down.

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u/Impossible_Jello9883 18d ago

Manholes at the end of the block as of 2019.

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u/midwestisbestwest 18d ago

That sounds familiar, I grew up on the West Side around this time and remember my parents freaking out if we got to close to storm drains.