Man who murdered 4 and left their corpses in Town of Sheridan sentenced to 100 years in prison
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Antoine Suggs
By LeAnn R. Ralph
RAMSEY COUNTY — The 39-year-old man who murdered four people and left their bodies in an SUV in a Town of Sheridan corn field in September of 2021 has been sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.
Antoine D. Suggs was convicted by a Ramsey County, Minnesota, jury on four counts of second degree murder (with intent, not premeditated).
Four counts of second degree murder while committing a felony were dismissed.
A Ramsey County jury convicted Suggs in March of this year.
Suggs was sentenced in Ramsey County court May 15 to 326 months in prison (27.1 years) on the first count and 306 months for each of the other three counts (25.5) years for a total of 1,244 months or 103.66 years.
Suggs received credit for 606 days of time served.
Under Minnesota law, Suggs will be eligible for supervised release after serving two-thirds of his sentence, or after serving a little more than 68 years in prison.
Bail was set at $10 million for Suggs after he was apprehended in Arizona and returned to Minnesota.
Suggs was convicted of murdering Nitosha Lee Flug-Presley (age 30) (found in the front passenger seat of the SUV); Jasmine Christine Sturm (age 31) (rear passenger side); Loyace Foreman III (age 35) (center rear seat); Matthew Isiah Pettus (age 26) (rear driver’s side seat).
Motions
Suggs has filed hand-written motions in Ramsey County court to dismiss the case because of insufficient evidence, because the defendant was “not in his right state of mind” and was “ON DRUGS” (hand written in all capital letters); because of lack of probable cause; and because of the “right to defend one’s life.”
Suggs’ motions also include a request for a new trial “on the grounds the defendant is actually innocent,” and that the judge should dismiss the judgement “for numerous constitutional violations of procedural due process of law.”
At one point in his motions, Suggs questions whether the Minnesota Copyrighted State Statutes were “certified by the Minnesota State Supreme Court before being implemented.”
Suggs’ father, Darren L. Osborne, age 57, pleaded guilty to aiding an offender (accomplice after the fact), and sentenced to 58 months (4.8 years) in prison with credit for 458 days served.
Osborne followed Suggs to the corn field in the Town of Sheridan and then gave Suggs a ride back to Minnesota.
Osborne claimed he did not know there were dead bodies in the SUV, even though surveillance cameras videotaped him at the Bridge Stop in Wheeler standing next to the open passenger side window, where one of the victims was located, slumped over in her seat.
Corn field
According to the criminal complaint, the Dunn County Sheriff’s Department received a report on Sunday, September 12, 2021, at about 2:18 p.m. of multiple people who were not moving in a vehicle. The vehicle was located in a corn field on County Road VVV in the Town of Sheridan.
Law enforcement officers responded and located the vehicle, which was identified as a 2008 black Mercedes Benz with Minnesota registration.
Officers observed four people in the vehicle, all of whom appeared to be deceased.
The vehicle was registered to Luxury Auto Sales LLC, and when officers contacted the 55 year old woman listed as the registered owner of the vehicle,
the woman said the co-owner of Luxury Auto Sales, a 35-year-old woman, was in possession of the vehicle and had planned to drive it to Georgia.
The 35-year-old woman told law enforcement officers she had given the vehicle to Antoine D. Suggs, according to the criminal complaint.
Wheeler gas station
After receiving a tip from an individual who had seen two vehicles driven by black men near the Sheridan Town Hall between 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Sunday, a Dunn County deputy went to the Bridge Stop gas station in Wheeler to review video surveillance from shortly after noon on Sunday, September 12, according to the complaint.
A black Nissan Rouge can be seen pulling up to the gas pump at the Bridge Stop at about 12:07 p.m.
The driver of the Nissan, an adult black male, wearing an “I am black history” shirt, goes into the store to purchase some items and then exits the store.
A black Mercedes pulled into the parking lot next to the Nissan Rouge.
The last three numbers on the registration plate of the Mercedes were “325” and were consistent with the vehicle in which the four victims had been found, the complaint states.
The driver of the Nissan made contact with the driver of the Mercedes and appeared to exchange something. The Mercedes can then be seen traveling north on state Highway 25, followed by the Nissan.
The deputy searched the spot were the Mercedes, as seen on the surveillance video, was parked at the gas station and saw reddish, dark-colored droplets of an unknown substance that was suspected to be blood.
The license plate of the Nissan Rouge can be seen on the surveillance video, and the vehicle was registered in Minnesota.
MN complaint
According to the statement of probable cause from Ramsey County, six shell casings were recovered from the interior of the Mercedes, and investigators found Suggs’ Arizona driver’s license covered in blood.
Blood had pooled under the Mercedes, and there were blood spatters in the wheel well, leading investigators to conclude the victims had been killed elsewhere.
Investigators also found a receipt for the White Squirrel showing a purchase had been made by one of the victims at 1:38 a.m. on September 12.
Later on, witnesses would say they had seen Suggs at Shamrocks, located on Seventh Street West in St Paul with three of the victims, and then at the White Squirrel, located on Seventh Street West in St. Paul, with two of the victims.
Witnesses recall seeing the victims getting into the Mercedes.
Phone data shows that one of the victims created a contact for Suggs at 3:08 a.m. and that Suggs’ phone and the Mercedes remained parked until around 3:30 a.m.
Surveillance video from Seventh Street and Walnut Street in St. Paul showed the Mercedes at 3:48 a.m., and it appears one of the victims is already slumped over in the front passenger seat.
“Investigators believe that Suggs killed the four victims in the area of Seventh Street in St. Paul, Ramsey County, between 3:30 a.m. and 3:48 a.m. on September 12, 2021,” according to the statement of probable cause.
More surveillance
Other surveillance videos show the victim clearly slumped over in the front seat.
Surveillance video from the Holiday gas station on Snelling Avenue north, for example, shows the Mercedes at a gas pump at 9:48 a.m., and “NF-P is clearly slumped over in the front passenger seat in the same position in which her body was found in Wisconsin. Suggs got out of the Mercedes-Benz and entered the store. Suggs is clearly identifiable on the store’s surveillance video since he did not wear a face covering,” according to the statement of probable cause.
September of 2021 was during the height of the Covid pandemic, and many people were wearing face masks to help prevent transmission of the disease.
Suggs’ and Osborne’s phones only received incoming calls between 10:13 a.m. and 11:16 a.m., and the phones never physically moved past the area of Lexington Parkway and I-94. The two of them left their cell phones behind in Minnesota when they drove to Wisconsin in the Mercedes and the Nissan, according to the statement of probable cause.
When Osborne agreed to talk to investigators, he told them that he had followed Suggs around to various gas stations in St. Paul, that Suggs had told his father “he snapped and shot a couple people,” and that Suggs said the shooting happened in the vehicle on Seventh Street.
Osborne denied knowing the bodies of the people his son shot were in the vehicle he and Suggs had abandoned in the corn field.
