click to enlarge SLMPD/DOYLE MURPHY

Edward Moore is accused of attacking four homeless people with a hammer in the old Carr School.

PHOTO BY DOYLE MURPHY

Homeless people sometimes live in the old Carr School.

A hammer-wielding Maryland Heights man who bashed four homeless people has been charged with assault, authorities say.Edward Moore, 61, attacked his victims on Saturday morning inside the old Carr School north of downtown St. Louis, police say.Officers responded about 9 a.m. and found two women, ages 37 and 29, and two men, ages 37 and 39, had been bashed in their heads. The 37-year-old woman and 39-year-old man took the worst of it. Police say they were both in critical and unstable condition at the hospital. The other man and woman were in stable condition.Moore, whose nickname is Texas, had served more than 25 years in prison after he was convicted of first-degree assault in 1991 in St. Louis County. Prison records show he was still on probation following his release in June.Moore was arrested on Sunday. He's charged with eight felonies — four counts each of first-degree assault and armed criminal action.The 108-year-old Carr School was shut down in 1978 and has become a haven for homeless people. The insides are mainly rubble — fallen plaster and lath, crumbling brick, broken glass — but people have also been able to retrofit an old classroom like a temporary apartment.Three of the victims were sleeping in one of the rooms when Moore walked in and started clubbing them with a hammer as well as a long, hard object, according to court documents. The fourth victim heard the commotion. He rushed in and tried stop Moore before he was bludgeoned, too, police say.Court records list an address in the 12100 block of Epernay Court, a Maryland Heights cul-de-sac, for Moore, but St. Louis police Detective Steve Strohmeyer wrote in the probable cause statement the ex-con had recently been sleeping in the school near his victims.The attack was apparently retribution, police say."The defendant believed that the victims had ransacked his personal items," Strohmeyer wrote.Moore was held on $500,000 bail.