Families furious as ‘woke’ prosecutor’s plea deal cheats them of justice for slain loved ones
The families of two victims shot dead by a repeat offender are furious after a plea deal from a ‘woke’ prosecutor’s office allowed the confessed killer’s sentences to run concurrently — meaning he could walk free in less than 27 years.
Marquez Hill-Turnipseed, now 24, admitted killing Eloe Lomax in a 2022 drive-by shooting before gunning down innocent bystander Stageina Whiting three years later during the 2025 Boom Island shooting in Minneapolis, KARE 11 reported.
Yet, instead of consecutive sentences recognizing each murder separately, notoriously woke warrior Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office negotiated a concurrent 40-year sentence combining the two murders.
After serving two-thirds of his sentence behind bars, Hill-Turnipseed could leave prison in less than 27 years, around age 50, the outlet reported.
For the victims’ families, the deal is devastating.
“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.
“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.
The Boom Island crime scene was described as a “war zone,” where investigators recovered 130 shell casings from five weapons.
Prosecutor Patrick Lofton called Whiting “an innocent victim in a stupid war that never seems to end.”
Hill-Turnipseed’s courtroom apology only deepened the families’ pain when he declared, “My family got to go through the same thing.”
Judge Michael Burns immediately rejected that comparison: “You have not lost your life in the same way the family of Eloe and Stageina have.”
“I understand people might not be happy with the negotiation in this case,” he said, “but I’m going to follow the negotiation in this case.”
The judge added that he doesn’t see his job “as a rubber stamp for anything that the lawyers do.”
Moriarty’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment.
A Hennepin County Attorney’s Office spokesperson told 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.
“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.”
This isn’t the first time Moriarty has come under fire for her woke policies that allow accused rapists, pedophiles and killers to stay free.
Moriarty, 62, took office as Hennepin County Attorney in January 2023, promising to “deliver more safety and more justice” to the community.
However, the prosecutor horrified local families and officials by pushing for suspects in even the most serious crimes to get probation in an effort to keep them out of prison, according to the Star Tribune.
Moriarty campaigned on the premise of increasing rehabilitation as opposed to incarceration for young offenders and planned to bring reform to the DA’s office.
“I think it takes a lot of courage actually to act upon what you say you’re going to do,” she told the Star Tribune late 2023.