Derrick Thompson found guilty of murdering 5 women in Minneapolis crash
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After about a day of deliberations, a Hennepin County jury on Friday found a Brooklyn Park man responsible for a violent crash that killed five young women as they drove along Lake Street in Minneapolis.
Jurors convicted Derrick Thompson on all of the 15 counts with which Hennepin County prosecutors charged him: 10 counts of criminal vehicular homicide and five counts of third-degree murder.
Prosecutors said that Thompson, now 29, had just rented a Cadillac Escalade at the Twin Cities airport on June 16, 2023, and was driving it northbound at more than 100 miles per hour along Interstate 35W before exiting at Lake Street. He sped through a green light at 31st Street, the first intersection past the exit, but ran a red light at Lake and slammed the three-ton SUV into the driver’s side of a much smaller Honda Civic, killing everyone inside.
Driver Sahra Gesaade, 20, died instantly along with passengers Salma Abdikadir, 20, Sagal Hersi, 19, Siham Odhowa, 19 and Sabiriin Ali, 17. The five were out shopping on Lake Street and getting henna tattoos the night before a friend’s wedding.
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Thompson drove 116 mph seconds before crash
At trial, prosecutors played videos from traffic cameras of Thompson driving on the interstate at nearly twice the posted speed limit before dodging other vehicles at the exit ramp and striking the Honda.
On Monday, Minnesota State Patrol Sgt. Kristofer Geiger — a crash reconstructionist — testified that Thompson made little effort to slow down, even as he drove onto city streets where the posted speed limit is 20 miles per hour. Geiger said the Escalade “went airborne” at 31st Street, a block south of Lake Street.
Under questioning from the prosecution, Geiger said that the Escalade was moving at 116 miles per hour about eight seconds before its impact with the Civic. Geiger testified that the SUV’s data recorder showed that the accelerator was 91 percent engaged, “almost to the floor,” 3.5 seconds before the crash, and that Thompson pressed the brake pedal only one second before impact.
Geiger estimated that the Escalade was traveling between 77 and 84 miles per hour at the time of the impact, and said it was one of the worst crashes he’d investigated in his career.
“Due to the level of traumatic injuries to the bodies’ midsections it was hard to determine an accurate count of how many were in the vehicle,” Geiger said.
Thompson’s brother testified against him
Defense attorney Tyler Bliss has said that his client’s brother, Damarco Thompson, was driving the SUV at the time of the crash. But in a surprise move on Wednesday, prosecutors subpoenaed Damarco and requested that Judge Carolina Lamas require him to testify. Because Damarco was compelled to take the witness stand, nothing he said there may be used to prosecute him.
Damarco Thompson told jurors that he went with Derrick to the car rental agency at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport on the day of the crash but that they each left in separate vehicles. In response to questions from Assistant Hennepin County Attorney James Hanneman, Damarco said that he never drove the Escalade at any point that day, and that Derrick was alone in the SUV when it struck the Civic.
Investigators found a gun, cocaine, and 2,000 fentanyl pills in the crashed SUV. At a separate trial in October, a federal jury convicted Derrick Thompson, the son of former DFL State Rep. John Thompson, of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, being a felon in possession of a firearm and carrying a firearm in relation to a drug trafficking crime.
