The Twin Cities couple sat in their vehicle in anticipation, just the two of them, ready to capture on video their own little gender reveal party.
Christopher Yang silently read the message on his phone and hammed it up with a high-pitched gasp.
“Show me!” insisted his wife, Melinda Thao. Yang turned phone in her direction.
“It’s a girl!” she said as she grabbed the phone to read it for herself. “Oh, my god. Funny crazy!”
On Sunday, just five weeks after that moment of joy, Thao and the future daughter they named Leona were killed in a collision at a Coon Rapids intersection. Yang suffered noncritical injuries.
On the same day that Yang posted the video to YouTube, Makayla April Sua Richardson, 20, of Mounds View, was charged in Anoka County District Court with one count each of criminal vehicular homicide and drunken driving, and two counts of criminal vehicular operation in connection with the collision Sunday at NW. Coon Rapids Boulevard and Springbrook Drive.
Richardson was jailed, appeared in court Tuesday and was released on bond Wednesday. She is due back in court on Sept. 12.
In an online fundraising campaign to help him with expenses related to the death of his wife and their unborn child, Yang detailed the difficulties they had trying to be parents for the first time and recorded their boy-or-girl news.