The families of two murder victims are speaking out after a plea deal allowed confessed killer Marquez Hill-Turnipseed to serve concurrent sentences for two separate killings.
Marquez Hill-Turnipseed, 24, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 2022 drive-by shooting death of Eloe Lomax and the 2025 killing of Stageina Whiting, 23, at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis, KARE 11 reported. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office negotiated a single 40-year sentence with the terms running concurrently rather than consecutively, meaning the two murders are effectively treated as one for sentencing purposes.
Under Minnesota law, Hill-Turnipseed could be released after serving two-thirds of his sentence, or roughly 26 years, putting him back on the streets around age 50. The deal has devastated both victims’ families, who say they were denied separate justice for each life taken.
“They were two different people. They should have made trial on two different cases, not put together,” Whiting’s mother, Tasha Blanks, told KARE 11.
Lomax’s mother, Talanda Burks, was equally outraged by the consolidated sentence. “He murdered my son first, and it should have been time for Eloe’s murder, then the young lady’s. And it shouldn’t have been joined together. He ruined two families,” she told the outlet.
“How can you combine two lives together?” Whiting’s aunt, TT Toni, asked.
Prosecutor Patrick Lofton called Whiting “an innocent victim in a stupid war that never seems to end” during court proceedings. The Boom Island crime scene was described as a “war zone,” with investigators recovering 130 shell casings from five weapons after the June 1 shooting that killed Whiting and injured five men.
Hill-Turnipseed offered a courtroom apology that only deepened the families’ pain. “My family got to go through the same thing,” he declared.
Judge Michael Burns immediately rejected that comparison. “You have not lost your life in the same way the family of Eloe and Stageina have,” he said. The judge added, “I understand people might not be happy with the negotiation in this case, but I’m going to follow the negotiation in this case.” He noted that he doesn’t see his job “as a rubber stamp for anything that the lawyers do.”
A Hennepin County Attorney’s Office spokesperson defended the arrangement in a statement to KARE 11. “The number of years any defendant is sentenced to serve has never and will never reflect the value of the person whose life they took. That value is incalculable and the loss leaves scars that will never heal,” the spokesperson wrote. “Our decisions on which resolutions to seek are guided most heavily by case strategy and public safety. Mr. Hill-Turnipseed will be removed for decades from the community he harmed.”
Moriarty, 62, took office as Hennepin County Attorney in January 2023 after campaigning on a platform of increasing rehabilitation and reducing incarceration for young offenders. She told the Star Tribune in late 2023 that she believed it took courage to implement the reforms she had promised. “I think it takes a lot of courage actually to act upon what you say you’re going to do,” she said.
In the viral moment that first put Moriarty’s policies under national scrutiny, her office has faced repeated criticism for lenient treatment of violent offenders. The Star Tribune reported that she has pushed for probation in serious cases to keep suspects out of prison, horrifying local families and officials. Her approach to the Hill-Turnipseed case — combining two murders into a single concurrent sentence — represents the latest flashpoint in the debate over progressive prosecution versus victim advocacy.
Hill-Turnipseed received credit for 414 days already served at the time of his sentencing. Co-defendant Zyere Porter pleaded guilty in June to aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder and is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 31. Two other men, Davion Gaines and Dechelen Mastin-Wilson, were each charged with two counts of illegal possession of a firearm in connection with the Boom Island shooting.