Mass Killings Anniversaries

Damone Presley sits next to a memorial in his house for his daughter, Nitosha, on May 4 in St. Paul, Minn. Nitosha and her three friends were found shot to death inside an SUV in a Wisconsin cornfield, though they were killed in St. Paul.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — On a September day that he knew would be hard, 51-year-old Damone Presley marked the occasion with barbecue and balloons.

He was commemorating the one-year anniversary of the day in 2021 that his daughter and her three friends were fatally shot in Minnesota by a man who left their bodies in an abandoned SUV in a Wisconsin cornfield. Presley gathered 50 friends to celebrate the life of his daughter, Nitosha Flug-Presley, who was 30 when she died. He went big on the anniversary because he felt sure that’s what his daughter would have wanted.

“She would always do stuff big,” Presley told The Associated Press.

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