Derrick Thompson rejects plea deal, will stand trial for murder in Mpls. crash that killed 5 women

Derrick Thompson rejected a plea deal that was offered by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and will instead stand trial on 15 felony counts, including murder, related to a high-speed car crash in 2023 that killed five young Somali women in Minneapolis.

At a pretrial hearing Monday, Fourth District Judge Carolina Lamas asked Thompson if he understood the implication of rejecting the plea deal.

“The state has amended the complaint for five charges of third-degree murder, you understand you’ll be going to trial on those counts?” Lamas asked.

Thompson replied, “Yes, ma’am.”

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty brought the additional murder charges in September three weeks after the plea deal was offered. Her office had already charged Thompson with 10 counts of vehicular homicide from the crash on the night of June 16, 2023.

If Thompson, the son of former DFL state Rep. John Thompson, had accepted the plea, he would have served between 32 and 38 years in prison. The Attorney’s Office was offering to drop the other felony charges, including the five counts of third-degree murder, in exchange for the plea. That offer expired Monday.

Monday’s hearing also featured testimony and body camera footage from several officers at the scene that night, including Minneapolis police officer Lewis Bady, Sgt. Joshua Stewart and Sgt. David Ligneel and Minnesota state trooper Curtis Triggs. Much of the testimony and footage was related to their interactions with a witness to the crime.

The defense filed a motion to dismiss evidence that witness provided, which named Thompson as the suspect in the crash. The witness saw someone flee from the scene of the accident and provided identifying details that matched Thompson. She was sitting in Bady’s patrol car as Thompson was taken out of the back of a squad car in handcuffs and stood in front of spotlights.

Bady asked her several times if Thompson was who she saw running from the crash site.

The defense argued that officers on the scene had been suggestive in getting the witness to ID Thompson and that the evidence she provided was not reliable. Lamas suppressed the motion, saying the police may have made suggestive comments but “in this case it was not unduly suggestive.” On top of that, she said the evidence from the witness was reliable.

Another motion filed by the defense asked Lamas to dismiss several statements made by Thompson at the scene of the crime since he had not been read his Miranda rights.

Lamas split the difference on that motion, saying several comments Thompson made were of his own volition, but at one point Thompson and an officer began having an argument over whether or not he should be arrested. Lamas ruled those statements are not admissible because police should know that line of discussion could lead Thompson to make statements that are “likely to elicit an incriminating response.”

The case now heads toward trial on Feb. 18. But at the end of the hearing, Thompson’s attorney, Tyler Bliss, said the defense will file a motion to dismiss the murder charges later this month. Thompson’s next court date will be Nov. 25.

It is the next step in a legal odyssey that has involved both state and federal courts after the crash gutted the Somali community in Minnesota.

According to the criminal charges and court documents:

On the night of the crash, Derrick Thompson was observed by a Minnesota state trooper driving 95 mph on Interstate 35W in a Cadillac Escalade. Thompson exited onto Lake Street, never decelerated, blew a red light and crashed into a Honda Civic carrying the five women.

The state trooper pursuing the car never turned on his lights but immediately approached the Civic, which had been hit with such force it was pushed out of the intersection and pinned against a retaining wall for the I-35W bridge. All five passengers in the car were dead.

The victims 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.

After the crash, Thompson allegedly 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.

Last month, a federal jury found Thompson guilty of gun and drug charges in connection with the crash. He was convicted of possession with intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl, being a felon in possession of a firearm and carrying a firearm “during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime.”

He has yet to be sentenced for those charges.

At the federal trial in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Thompson’s defense attorneys argued that the drugs and a loaded Glock pistol with an extended magazine discovered in the Escalade he was driving belonged to his brother, Damarco John Thompson — whom the prosecution and defense said was a passenger in the SUV and fled the scene with Derrick Thompson.

Stephen Montemayor and Paul Walsh contributed to this story.