Derrick Thompson sentenced to 58 years for killing 5 women in high-speed crash
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A Brooklyn Park man convicted of killing five young women in a 2023 high-speed crash was sentenced Thursday morning to more than 58 years in prison.
In June, a Hennepin County jury found Derrick Thompson guilty on all charges, including five counts of third-degree murder and 10 counts of criminal vehicular homicide.
During his trial, Thompson’s defense claimed he was not the driver. On Thursday, however, after friends and family members of the dead women offered heartbreaking statements about the lives lost and the enormous grief that remains, he acknowledged being behind the wheel.
Thompson, the 29-year-old son of former DFL state Rep. John Thompson, had rented a Cadillac Escalade SUV at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on June 16, 2023 and was driving it at more than 100 miles per hour when he exited Interstate 35W and crashed into a sedan on Lake Street.
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Driver Sahra Gesaade, 20, was killed instantly along with Salma Abdikadir, 20, Sagal Hersi, 19, Siham Odhowa, 19 and Sabiriin Ali, 17. The five Somali American women had been running errands and getting henna tattoos in preparation for a friend’s wedding.
Sgt. Kristofer Geiger, a Minnesota State Patrol crash reconstruction expert, told jurors that Thompson made little effort to slow down, and the SUV went airborne seconds before the crash. Geiger testified that the vehicle’s data recorder showed that the accelerator was “almost to the floor” 3.5 seconds before the crash, and that Thompson pressed the brake pedal only one second before impact.
The defense tried to argue that his brother Damarco was driving. But in a surprise move, prosecutors compelled Damarco to testify, and he told the jury that he was not in the vehicle at the time of the crash.
Thompson is also awaiting sentencing in a related federal case for the pistol and 2,000 fentanyl pills police found in the wrecked SUV.
Judge Carolina Lamas took the sentencing recommendations of the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. In court, prosecutor Paige Starkey said Thompson had made a “series of choices over the course of years that shows his indifference and shows his dangerousness.”
Thompson had previously been convicted of a similar crime in California where he’d nearly killed someone. This crash, said Starkey, was “not just a terrible accident” but predictable given his past behavior.
Thompson’s defense attorney Tyler Bliss had sought a sentence of more than 20 years, noting that Thompson would likely be receiving an additional 10-year federal sentence and that Hennepin County prosecutors were essentially seeking “a life sentence for a nonintentional murder.”
Thompson begged the court for mercy just before sentencing.
“I’m truly sorry to the families of the five beautiful women. I’m sorry for all the heartbreak I have caused,” he told the court. He said he’s tried to rehabilitate himself in the time he’s been in prison and called the crash a “terrible mistake. I have been punished by God and had everything taken away from me but my skin.”
He pleaded with the judge to “please have mercy on me. Please don’t give up on me. Hold me to my future and not my past.”
Thompson already has a little more than two years of accrued prison time. Minnesota sentencing guidelines typically allow for someone convicted of a felony to serve about two-thirds of their sentence in prison. He could be out of prison and on parole in about 39 years.
‘A heart that’s forever broken’
Before the sentencing Thursday, the court heard from loved ones of the women who were killed. Their statements were heavy with tears, pain and calls for accountability.
They said Thompson was not remorseful and had compounded the families’ pain by trying to evade responsibility for what he’d done.
“You’re not reckless, Derrick Thompson. You’re evil,” said Sundus Odhowa, the sister of Siham Odhowa. “You left us with a lifetime of grief and you do not deserve forgiveness,” she told the court. “We hope Derrick Thompson never forgets the weight of what he's done. This grief is forever. This loss is forever.”
They told stories of how their daughters, friends and sisters had been filled with promise and possibilities before the crash that killed them.
“I’m here with a heart that’s forever broken,” Sundus Ali, the older sister of Sabiriin Ali, told the court. Sabiriin, she said, was a “living soul who brought so much joy into our lives. Sabiriin was everything to us. She had a heart that overflowed with love and compassion.”
She urged the maximum sentence saying “five beautiful, loving people, taken away in an instant because of his reckless choices.”
Rukia Gesaade, the sister of Sahra Gesaade, spoke of the enormous future each of the women had in front of them and that “none of them got to accomplish their dreams.”
Sahra had hoped to become a doctor “and save other people’s lives,” she said. Sahra was about to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in health science and was planning her graduation party before she was killed. Rukia went to the graduation ceremony and accepted Sahra’s degree in her place.
In their last conversations, she said they talked about making their parents proud and accomplishing things in life.
“Dreams, ambitions, wanting to make their family proud …. all of that gone in seconds,” she said of Sahra and the four other women killed.
Correction (July 24, 2025): A previous version of this story carried a caption with a misspelling of Sagal Hersi's first name. The above story has been updated.
