Man charged in connection to fatal Minneapolis firefighter shooting pleads guilty
MINNEAPOLIS — A 29-year-old man charged in connection to the shooting death of a Twin Cities firefighter in May entered a guilty plea on Wednesday.
Marquise Hammonds-Ford was charged with two illegal gun charges and one count of first-degree riot. He pleaded guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, but the other charges were dropped, court documents say. As part of the deal Hammonds-Ford faces an aggravated sentence of 6.5 years in prison, which is 1.5 years longer than the presumptive sentence for the charge.
Joseph Johns, an Eden Prairie firefighter, died in the shooting on May 5. He was off-duty at a bar in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis when he was shot. Investigators found 63 discharged cartridge casings on both sides of the street, charges said, and they believed Johns' death resulted from an "altercation and subsequent shootout between two groups of men."
Hammonds-Ford was seen on video wielding a handgun with an extended magazine, yelling and pointing the gun at the group Johns was with that night. Court documents said it was not clear from which group the gunfire that killed Johns came.
A second man, Dallas Villarreal-Griffin, was charged days later with one count of first-degree riot. His trial will begin in November.