ST. LOUIS • Family and friends of Patrick McVey, an owner of the popular downtown Irish bar Maggie O’Brien’s, are hoping a $15,000 reward will bring answers in a murder case that has few.
McVey, 57, was found slumped over in the driver’s seat of his gray Ford Explorer on the side of Interstate 55 near Loughborough Avenue shortly before 6 p.m. Wednesday. Police say he had gunshot wounds and was dead at the scene.
But police believe he was shot hours earlier. They say he had been shot by an unknown suspect or suspects while driving south on the interstate at about 2:30 p.m. Officers said a witness helped them determine the time, but did not give any other details.
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It’s unclear how the car and his body went unnoticed for more than three hours.
When the news reached general manager Aaron Snively at Maggie O’Brien’s Restaurant & Irish Pub, on Market Street near Union Station, he and his staff decided to close the restaurant early — during a home Blues game, for the first time in decades. He said it was a time to reminisce and pray. Former employees stopped by to pay their condolences.
Family and friends added $5,000 to CrimeStoppers' usual reward for a homicide, and an anonymous donor chipped in more, for a total of $15,000. Authorities asked anyone with information about McVey's death to contact CrimeStoppers at 866-371-8477. Tipsters can remain anonymous and still claim the reward.
‘An extraordinary person’
McVey co-owned the bar with his brother Eddie McVey. Snively said Patrick McVey had worked at the bar for almost 30 years, starting shortly after it opened in 1979 as a bartender while he took classes at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
“I think what makes it so difficult is the type of person he was,” Snively said Thursday. Longtime customers were calling all afternoon paying their respects, he said. He said McVey was generous, volunteering in as many groups as he could from church to his service employees union.
McVey’s body — shot multiple times — was discovered by a Missouri Department of Transportation employee who stopped to check on the vehicle that was parked on the I-55 shoulder south of Loughborough. A MoDOT traffic camera nearby is pointed toward the scene, but a department spokesperson said those cameras don’t record and are there only for real-time use.
Police don’t have any suspects and haven’t released any information about a potential motive in the killing.
“We’re just devastated,” said McVey’s brother, Hugh McVey. “We’re just trying to wrap our heads around it. We don’t know what happened.”
He spoke to a reporter briefly Thursday while detectives were at his home. Funeral arrangements had not yet been made when he spoke to the Post-Dispatch.
Back at Maggie O’Brien’s, which reopened Thursday, Snively said the team was resilient and would “get through this.”
“Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get to have an extraordinary person in your life,” he said. “Patrick was extraordinary.”
The bar has seen tragedy before. A bartender was killed in a botched robbery in 2009 that also saw one of the robbers accidentally shot and killed by one of his accomplices.
The surviving robber, a lookout and a bar employee who helped plot the crime were all sentenced to prison time in 2011.