A Minnesota father says his son is ‘evil’ but didn’t realize there were bodies in car he helped hide
Darren Lee Osborne says he thought his son was involved in a drug deal gone bad
Some fathers help their sons learn how to tie a tie, to throw a ball, or how to shave. Darren Lee Osborne, 56, of St. Paul, Minnesota, helped his son, Antoine Suggs, 38, hide four bodies, according to police documents.
Suggs, a resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, is accused of involving both his mother, Trudy Brown, and his father in his quest to hide the bodies of four people he’s accused of fatally shooting after a night of hanging out in two St. Paul bars, per The St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Osborne, jailed in Minnesota on $2M bail on charges including four counts of hiding a corpse, was the first arrested in the horrific case. Per theGrio, in the early evening hours of Sept. 12, longtime friends Jasmine Sturm, 30, Nitosha Flug-Presley, 30, Sturm’s boyfriend Loyace Foreman, 35, and half-brother Matthew Pettus, 26, were killed in a Black Mercedes-Benz SUV near one of the bars after a night out. Their accused killer is in custody in Arizona on $2M bail waiting for extradition to Minnesota.
In interviews with police after his arrest on Sept. 15, and following a timeline of evidence authorities in Minnesota and Wisconsin, with the help of the FBI, established, Osborne, also known as Darren McWright, said he was contacted by his son around 5 a.m. According to the complaint, Suggs ultimately came to the home Osborne was staying at accompanied by his mother.
Osborne said he was surprised to see them both but that the three rode around in Brown’s Nissan Rogue to try to find cigarettes for Suggs, then parked outside of her home and talked for more than an hour. Osborne says his son asked that his parents help support his six kids and that Osborne do a better job of getting along with Brown’s husband, per the complaint.
“Dad, I need you to drive my mom’s car and follow me and don’t ask no questions,” Osborne told police his son said.
Osborne then agreed to follow his son in the Rogue, while Suggs drove the Benz that had been parked at Brown’s house with the bodies still in the car, per reports in the Pioneer Press and Minnesota Star-Tribune. The two drove to multiple gas stations looking for diesel gas for the Benz SUV, according to surveillance video acquired as part of the complaint.
Though Osborne denied seeing bodies in the car, and said he thought his son had been involved in dope deal gone bad, surveillance cameras show that at a gas station in Wisconsin, he handed his son something through the driver’s side window.
He then went around to the passenger side window, with Flug-Presley slumped in the seat the way she would be found when the bodies were recovered in Wisconsin. Though Osborne denied that he saw any other bodies given the dark tints on the vehicle, surveillance cameras showed the windows of the SUV were down. Osborne then said that he “wasn’t looking.”
“Osborne … approached and stood at the Mercedes-Benz’s open passenger window next to [Flug-Presley’s] hunched over body while in the gas station parking lot. Both vehicles left the gas station headed in the direction of the cornfield where the Mercedes-Benz was discovered,” the complaint against Osborne reveals.
Osborne ultimately followed his son to the cornfield where the SUV was left. Police later found Suggs’ bloody driver’s license in the car, as they recovered the bodies of the four victims, per the Pioneer Press. It’s unclear how Suggs returned to Arizona without it. Suggs turned himself in to Arizona police on Sept. 17. It’s more than a 20-hour drive, and it would have been difficult to board a plane without a license unless he had another government ID.
In further interviews, Osborne was more forthcoming, telling investigators at first that he’d left his son in the cornfield, saying he said he was getting a ride back from someone else. But he finally admitted not only that his son told him he’d “snapped” and killed “a few people” but that he did drive him back to Minnesota, roughly an hour drive from where the bodies were found in Wisconsin. Osborne also referred to his son as “evil” and said that he’d told Osborne that he’d be going to jail for the rest of his life.
Osborne faces third-degree assault charges in another case — in May, it is alleged that he stomped and beat a 48-year old man at a gas station in St. Paul, per the Pioneer Press report. Suggs has a criminal history as well. In 2019, he was arrested in Arizona on multiple charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful flight from a law enforcement vehicle.
Despite the information he revealed to investigators, one thing remains unknown – a motive. Osborne has not revealed if Suggs told him anything about why he allegedly shot four people. Per the Pioneer Press, a witness at one of the two bars the group was at says they heard a man they believed was Suggs arguing with Flug-Presley. From what they heard, he referenced his six children and said “this happens every time he comes to Minnesota.” Suggs and Flug-Presley are believed to have been in a romantic relationship, though it was not revealed if he was the father of her two children.
The timeline established suggests that the group was friendly enough that Foreman was putting Suggs in as a contact in his phone around 3:08 a.m. Twenty minutes later, he, and the rest of his friends, were dead.
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