If Derrick Thompson accepts the plea, he would serve between 32 and 38 years in prison after being charged with 10 counts of criminal vehicular manslaughter.
By Jeff DayThe Minnesota Star Tribune
A plea deal is on the table for the man charged with killing five young women in a vicious car crash when he ran a red light at 95 mph in Minneapolis last year, shattering the Twin Cities Somali community.
Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Paige Starkey told Judge Carolina Lamas they have offered Derrick Thompson a deal where he would plead guilty to five of 10 counts of criminal vehicular homicide while causing the accident and fleeing the scene. If he accepts, Thompson would serve between 32 and 38 years in prison.
In return, Starkey said the county would drop the other five charges of criminal vehicular homicide while operating a motor vehicle in a gross or negligent manner.
The offer will remain open until Nov. 4, the next scheduled court date on the case.
Family members of the women filled the courtroom on Tuesday afternoon, stepping into the hallway to huddle and cry after the potential deal was announced on the record.
The five young women who were killed were: Sabiriin Ali, 17, of Bloomington; Sahra Gesaade, 20, of Brooklyn Center; Salma Abdikadir, 20, of St. Louis Park; Sagal Hersi, 19, of Minneapolis; and Siham Adam, 19, of Minneapolis. On the night they were killed, the women were on their way home after running last-minute errands before a friend’s wedding the next day.
Their funeral last year was attended by thousands at a football field behind the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, where all five had all volunteered and taught. An online fundraiser to support the victims’ families raised over $450,000.
According to court documents, on June 16, 2023, a Minnesota state trooper observed Thompson weaving through traffic in a Cadillac Escalade heading northbound at 95 mph on Interstate 35W near 46th Street at about 10 p.m. The trooper never turned on his lights but pursued the Escalade and saw it abruptly cut across four lanes of traffic to exit the freeway at Lake Street. As the Escalade traveled down the exit ramp, it blew a red light and crashed into a Honda Civic, hitting it with such force that it was pushed out of the intersection and pinned against a wall for the 35W bridge. The trooper immediately approached the Civic and saw that all five victims were deceased.
Thompson fled on foot to a nearby Taco Bell, where an eyewitness identified him “100 percent positive” as the driver of the Escalade. Investigators used a receipt and surveillance video to show that Thompson had rented the car from a Hertz location at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport about 24 minutes before the crash.
When officers obtained a search warrant for the Escalade, they found a Glock 40 semiautomatic handgun, 250 grams of fentanyl in 2,000 individual pills, 35.6 grams of cocaine and 13 pills that tested positive for MDMA.
Thompson’s trial in Hennepin County District Court is scheduled to begin on Dec. 2, and the bulk of Tuesday’s hearing was largely procedural.
Tyler Bliss, Thompson’s attorney, filed a motion asking the court to suppress evidence that occurred immediately after the crash when Thompson was taken into custody.
Bliss argued that a witness was transported to the same location where Thompson was taken for a “show-up” and “Mr. Thompson was made to walk in front of the witness following police telling the witness that Mr. Thompson was the suspect.” Bliss argued that “the confrontation between the witness and the suspect was impermissibly suggestive.”
Bliss also asked the court to suppress statements that Thompson made to law enforcement after his arrest because police did not read him his Miranda rights. Bliss noted that the state and the defense are “likely in agreement about which statements would be subject to suppression.”
