Sister recounts heartbreak to cap emotional day of testimony in Derrick John Thompson trial

When her sister died, Rukia Gesaade was asleep.

“I was woken up by my two brothers,” Gesaade, 21, testified at the trial of Derrick John Thompson on Friday. “They were like, ‘We gotta go.’”

The siblings drove from their home in Brooklyn Center to Lake Street in Minneapolis. It was around 2 a.m. There were ambulances everywhere, yellow police tape. People were walking up to her and saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Gesaade’s sister, Sahra Gesaade, was in the family’s Honda Civic with her friends Sabiriin Ali, Salma Abdikadir, Sagal Hersi and Siham Adam when the car was obliterated by a Cadillac Escalade that, according to prosecutors, was driven by Thompson who ran a red light at 95 miles per hour.

The girls were getting ready for a wedding the next day.

“They never made it,” Gesaade said.

As she spoke, Thompson held his hands to his mouth in the form of a prayer, then he bent his head and closed his eyes for the remainder of her testimony. The son of former DFL state Rep. John Thompson, he faces 15 felony counts, including third-degree murder and multiple counts of criminal vehicular manslaughter.

Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Joseph Paquette asked Gesaade to describe her sister.

“I can’t put Sahra into words because she was everything,” Gesaade said. “A mentor, a built-in best friend. She was a very smart person. I always looked up to her growing up. We were close in age, about a year apart.”

She described her parents making them wear the same clothes because they looked so similar. She said, “My first things I learned, how to bike, how to swim, how to read, all my firsts were with her.”

Gesaade was the 11th and final witness called to testify in a relentless second day of Thompson’s trial.

As she spoke, the courtroom heaved. Jurors openly wept. Members of the gallery wailed, stood and left to compose themselves.

Gesaade tried to describe the impact of the loss from the June 2023 car crash. She spoke of the 10 parents to the five girls, all in the courtroom.

“They’ll never see their daughters, never see their smiles, never see the fruits of putting effort into their child, never see their graduation,” she said. “They were so young. 17-20. Their life was just starting. Everything gone in one instant.”

The rest of the day was spent with witnesses detailing the chaotic aftermath of that instant.

As the state built its case, eyewitnesses and law enforcement personnel recounted their experience of the crash and the search for a suspect.

Crime scene photos of the victims’ car were shown in detail — every part of the car behind the hood was an abstract twisting of metal and cloth without any resemblance to an automobile.

Tyler Bliss, Thompson’s attorney, worked to create uncertainty around the reliability of memory and questioned the process that led Thompson to be identified as the suspect at the scene of the crime.

Dorinda Pacheco, an eyewitness who was letting her dog Rocky outside that night, said she saw the Escalade careering down the road directly outside her home.

“It was like in a movie,” she said, recalling a screech, a boom and the black SUV hitting a lightpole before spinning around and settling.

Pacheco is the only witness who claimed to see Thompson leaving the car and she testified that she tracked his movements as he went into an alley behind her home and then circled back down the alley toward McDonalds and Taco Bell on Lake Street.

Minneapolis police officer Lewis Bady was the first person to identify Thompson as a suspect after he found him with small marks of blood on his head and hands. Thompson was sitting outside Taco Bell near two random women approximately 30 minutes after the crash.

Bady’s body camera footage was played during his testimony.

In the video, Thompson says the blood came from a fall he had while walking a few blocks away. He was put in handcuffs.

Later, Bady drove Pacheco to identify a suspect.

Thompson was taken out of a different squad car and stood in front of a spotlight.

Bady asked Pacheco if that was the same man she saw get out of the Escalade.

“It was dark, but he had a T-shirt like that on,” Pacheco said.

“100 percent this is the guy?” Bady asked.

“Similar, yes,” Pacheco said.

Bady then tells other officers on the scene to make Thompson walk to see if he limps.

“100 percent you saw him running from the crash?” he asked Pacheco again.

“Yes,” she answered.

Bliss cross-examined Bady. He noted Bady had only been on the force for three or four months when this wreck happened. He asked Bady if it was a chaotic scene because of the heavy presence of civilians and law enforcement alongside reports gunshots had been fired in the area.

“The atmosphere was tense,” Bady said.

Bliss asked if it was known there is a risk of suggestiveness from law enforcement when they bring a witness to identify a suspect at the scene of a crime.

Bady said it’s a known concern but “we stay as objective as possible.”