Detectives are investigating the murders of four friends who were found shot dead in an SUV in a Wisconsin cornfield.
The victims were identified as Nitosha Flug-Presley, 30; Matthew Pettus, 26; Loyace Foreman III, 35, and his girlfriend Jasmine Christine Sturm, 30, all from Twin Cities, Minnesota.
The medical examiner determined all four victims died from multiple gunshot wounds.
A farmer working in a cornfield on Sunday found the abandoned black SUV parked about 50 yards off the road among tall corn stalks in the small town of Sheridan, Wisconsin.
The farmer called 911 to report the mysterious vehicle. Police arrived minutes later and determined the crime scene was no accident. Officers said none of the victims were in the driver’s seat.
“Do we have an accident, or we got something else?” one officer asked on a police scanner.
“It’s gonna be something else, from what I can tell. Looks like a .32 [caliber handgun] was involved,” another officer replied.
The cornfield is located 75 miles away from where the four friends were last seen at a bar in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Saturday night.
Witnesses said the four left the bar and got into a black SUV with someone late Saturday. A second SUV was following the first SUV, according to the sheriff.
The black SUV was seen on surveillance video at a gas station around noon Sunday, two hours before it was discovered in the cornfield, according to the Star Tribune.
Matthew Pettus and Jasmine Christine Sturm are half-siblings.
Loyace Foreman III was the son of Loyace Foreman Jr, senior pastor at New Vision Faith Center in Saint Paul.
Foreman III, right, had two children and was in a romantic relationship with Sturm, left, who also had two sons, ages 11 and 5. The youngest boy had just celebrated his birthday last month, according to Dailymail.com.
Nitosha Flug-Presley was also a mother of two children, a young son and a daughter.
Sturm and Pettus’ brother, Zach Pettus, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he has “an idea” who killed his siblings. He didn’t go into detail.
“This is a freak thing that never should have happened,” Zach Pettus said. “There is nothing that indicated this would have happened.”
In a press conference Tuesday, Dunn County Sheriff Kevin Bygd said the victims were shot at another location before their bodies were found in the cornfield.
He said he doesn’t believe the killer(s) are locals or still in the area. He said investigators don’t have a motive for the murders.
Bygd called the murders “a mystery,” before adding “Everybody’s a suspect at this point. “We’re looking at everybody and every possibility.”
