Marquese Gaten

Introduction

Marquese Gaten, a 24-year-old from Springfield, Missouri, was sentenced in federal court to 80 months in prison for possessing a stolen firearm and making a false statement while attempting to purchase one — a firearms case that grew out of a New Year’s Day 2025 shooting in Springfield in which Gaten admitted he shot the victim, took the man’s gun and phone, and threw all of the weapons out of his car window as he fled. U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Bough imposed the sentence on November 3, 2026, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Gaten pleaded guilty to a two-count superseding information on November 13, 2025.

Background Information

The false-statement count traces to August 10, 2024, when Gaten attempted to buy a firearm from a federal firearms licensee at a gun show at the Ozark Empire Fairgrounds. On the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Firearm Transaction Form, he falsely claimed he was not prohibited from possessing a firearm as a person who was facing charges for a felony crime. By pleading guilty, Gaten admitted he lied on the form in violation of federal law — the paperwork half of a case whose violent half came less than five months later. The case was investigated by the ATF and the Springfield Police Department and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie L. Wan.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Pleaded guilty and sentenced. Gaten admitted the conduct described below by pleading guilty to possessing a stolen firearm and making a false statement in a firearm purchase, and has been sentenced to 80 months. The federal counts adjudicated were firearms offenses; no homicide count appears in the release.

On January 1, 2025, Springfield police officers responded to 1919 West Bennett for a person who had been shot. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene, and the suspect — Gaten — initially fled but later turned himself in. As part of his plea, Gaten admitted that he shot the victim, took the victim’s firearm and cellphone, and threw both his own gun and the victim’s guns and cellphones out the window of his car as he fled. Law enforcement was never able to recover the firearms, meaning the weapons from a fatal shooting simply vanished into the community on Gaten’s account of that night.

The ballistics trail extended the record beyond that scene. Shell casings recovered from the Bennett Street shooting were submitted to the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, and leads generated there indicated the gun Gaten admitted possessing and using to kill the victim was also involved in two additional Springfield shootings — one on April 8, 2024, and one on November 10, 2024. The federal case adjudicated by the plea did not charge those shootings or the killing itself; it convicted Gaten on the stolen-gun possession and the false-purchase statement, the counts prosecutors could prove within federal firearms law.

Judge Bough’s 80-month sentence sits inside the sentencing framework those counts carry, imposed after Gaten’s own admissions put the fatal shooting and the NIBIN links on the record. The case was also prosecuted under Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Justice Department’s violent-crime initiative operated through the U.S. Attorneys’ offices as part of Operation Take Back America. What the sentence does not resolve is any state or federal homicide charge for the January 2025 death; the release announces the firearms case only.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The announcement reads as a Springfield case study in how a stolen gun moves: bought under a false form at a fairgrounds gun show in August 2024, used in shootings that autumn, and turned on a victim on New Year’s Day. The consequence imposed is federal — 80 months, then three years of supervised release — with the firearms themselves unrecovered. No statement from Gaten or his attorney appears in the release, and no family response has been reported. The victim’s death on January 1, 2025, is documented in the release as the admitted act behind the conviction, a record now permanent regardless of what further charges any jurisdiction may or may not bring.

Current Status

Gaten, 24, is sentenced and in federal custody: 80 months imposed November 3, 2026, by U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Bough, followed by three years of supervised release, on his November 13, 2025, guilty plea to the two-count superseding information. The admitted conduct — the fatal shooting, the stolen gun and phone thrown from the fleeing car, the two prior NIBIN-linked shootings — is part of his plea record but was not adjudicated as homicide counts in this case. No further charges are announced in the release, and no appeal has been reported.

Impact on Their Career/Life

At 24, Gaten’s next six-plus years are set by a federal sentence that rests on his own admissions — including that he killed the victim whose gun and phone he took while fleeing. The false-form conviction marks him as a prohibited purchaser who lied his way to a gun show counter in August 2024; the possession conviction marks the stolen gun that followed. The NIBIN links mean his admitted weapon is now formally tied to three Springfield shootings. He will leave federal custody on supervised release into a record where the January 1, 2025, death he admitted causing was never charged as a killing.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Missouri, “Springfield Man Sentenced to 80 Months for Firearms Offenses Related to a 2025 Shooting,” November 3, 2026. source