In the early morning hours of May 23, 2019, the body of 16-year-old Kristina Curry was discovered in the parking lot of Roosevelt High School in the Tower Grove East neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. A student at the school, she had been shot multiple times, with one report indicating she suffered six gunshot wounds. Her discovery by school staff marked the beginning of a homicide investigation that would initially yield few answers, leaving her grieving family without closure for more than
six years. At the time of her death, she was just a month shy of her seventeenth birthday, described by her mother as a high-spirited girl who loved her family and gardening.
For years, the case remained unsolved, classified as a cold case as detectives struggled to identify a suspect. However, a breakthrough occurred in September 2025 when homicide detectives, utilizing phone records and text message data, arrested a 26-year-old man named Marquise Quinn. Investigators revealed that Quinn, who was 20 years old at the time of the murder, had been in a relationship with the victim. Text messages recovered by police indicated that the teenager believed she was pregnant with Quinn's child and had communicated this to him shortly before her death. The digital evidence placed Quinn at the scene and showed he was the last person to communicate with her, having allegedly arranged to meet her in the very parking lot where she was later found deceased.
Following his arrest on September 1, 2025, Quinn was charged with first-degree murder and held without bond. The development offered a fleeting sense of justice to the victim's family, who had waited over half a decade for an arrest. Authorities stated that the motive appeared linked to the pregnancy claim and the meeting arranged thereafter. The victim's sister expressed a mix of relief and renewed heartbreak, noting the betrayal of trust, as the accused was someone the victim had known and confided in.
However, the legal proceedings took a sudden turn just a month later in early October 2025. A St. Louis grand jury reviewed the evidence presented by prosecutors but declined to issue an indictment, resulting in the dismissal of the murder charge. Consequently, Quinn was released from jail. The decision devastated the victim's family, who criticized the outcome given the evidence cited by detectives, including the text messages and timeline. Prosecutors emphasized that the dismissal did not equate to innocence and that the case remains open, with the possibility of refiling charges should new evidence, such as further DNA testing mentioned by the family, come to light.
