After jurors found Derrick John Thompson guilty Friday of murdering five women with his car in Minneapolis, the mother of one of the crash victims said family and friends feel as though the heaviness has been lifted off their shoulders.

“We feel relief right now,” said Fadumo Warsame, adding that they’ve been waiting for justice for nearly two years.

Two hours earlier, Thompson, the 29-year-old son of a former St. Paul state representative, stood stoically as Hennepin County District Judge Carolina Lamas read the guilty charges: five counts of third-degree murder and 10 counts of criminal vehicular homicide for operating a motor vehicle in a grossly negligent manner and leaving the scene of an accident.

The verdict was reached after about nine hours of deliberations over two days.

Jurors answered yes to every question on a verdict form that allows the state to argue for an upward departure from Minnesota sentencing guidelines. Sentencing was set for July 24.

Whatever his sentence, Warsame said, Thompson “can call his mom and his dad from the jail and tell them he loves them. But our daughters, they are never going to call us. They will never say, ‘I love you.’ We’re never going to see them.”

Thompson was driving 95 mph on Interstate 35W in a rented Cadillac Escalade SUV when he passed a Minnesota State Trooper, exited on Lake Street at 116 mph, and then ran a red light at Second Avenue, crashing into the victims’ Honda Civic just after 10 p.m. June 16, 2023.Killed instantly were Warsame’s daughter, Sahra Liban Gesaade, 20, of Brooklyn Center, and her friends Salma Mohamed Abdikadir, 20, of St. Louis Park; Sabiriin Mohamoud Ali, 17, of Bloomington; Sagal Burhaan Hersi, 19, of Minneapolis, and Siham Adan Odhowa, 19, of Minneapolis. They were returning from preparing for a friend’s wedding, which was to be the next day.

“These young women were all friends, and they were bright lights in their families and community, consistently described as empathetic and kind,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said. “They should have made it to the wedding they were preparing to celebrate. They should still be with their loved ones.”

In September, prosecutors added the five counts of third-degree murder, which is defined in state statute as “perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life.”

“Members of the jury, not every murder is calculated or considered,” Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Paige Starkey said Thursday in the state’s closing arguments. “Not every murder is directed at a particular person or people.”

He blamed his brother

Tyler Bliss, Thompson’s attorney, tried to cast doubt during the trial that Thompson was the driver, despite jurors seeing surveillance video of him renting the Escalade from Hertz at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and then driving away. Bliss suggested Thompson’s older brother, Damarco Thompson, was the driver that night, pointing to evidence that his hat and a set of car keys were found inside the crashed SUV.

In response, the state subpoenaed Damarco to take the stand. On Wednesday, he testified that he never drove the Escalade. He said they drove to MSP in a Dodge Challenger and that after Derrick rented the Escalade, they met near the airport. Derrick transferred some possessions from the Challenger to the Escalade, which he then drove away, Damarco said.

To make its case, prosecutors presented a lot of video from the night, including of the violent crash and his interaction with police.

Thompson was seen speeding past a state trooper parked under a northbound I-35W overpass. The trooper wasn’t able to catch up or turn on the squad’s emergency lights or sirens before Thompson cut across all four lanes of traffic and turned off the interstate at Lake Street. He drove down the exit ramp and into the intersection without stopping or slowing for the red light.

On the second day of the trial, a homeowner testified that she saw Thompson limping past her Second Avenue house, then cut through a neighbor’s yard and go down the alley toward a McDonald’s parking lot.

After Thompson was arrested near the fast-food restaurant, he denied involvement in the crash and said his injuries were “old.”

Prosecutors also reminded jurors of how Thompson acted after the crash by replaying a police officer body-cam video of an interaction with him.

“Do you know how long this is going to take?” he asked an officer while sitting in the back of a squad car, adding he had “things I do wanna get done on my Friday night, you know?”

Thompson’s father, John Thompson, was a first-term lawmaker representing St. Paul’s East Side when he was defeated in the DFL primary in August 2022 in the wake of a number of controversies, which included questions about his official residence following a July 2021 traffic stop in St. Paul.

‘Two horrible trials’

Six months before the crash, Derrick Thompson was released from a California prison for fleeing police and speeding off the highway and onto city streets, where he struck and severely injured a woman.

The state sought to introduce evidence from that case to support its murder charges, but last month the state court of appeals affirmed Lamas’ ruling that prosecutors cannot introduce that evidence, concluding that while the two car crashes both involved reckless driving and caused serious injury, “this commonality is too general” in showing a pattern of behavior.

“Instead of learning from that tragedy and the trail of devastation that he has left in his wake,” Moriarty said after Friday’s verdict, “Mr. Thompson chose to drive at speeds upward of 100 miles per hour with a Glock handgun and a large amount of drugs in his vehicle.”

Last fall, a federal jury found Thompson, of Brooklyn Park, guilty of federal drug and weapons charges connected with the crash; more than 2,000 fentanyl pills and a Glock 40 semiautomatic handgun were found inside the Cadillac after the crash. A sentencing date has not been set.

In November, Thompson turned down a plea offer from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office that called for a prison term between 32½ and nearly 39 years for pleading guilty to five counts of criminal vehicular homicide.

Attorney Jeff Storms, who the families asked to speak on their behalf, said Thompson put the families through “two horrible trials” and “forced these families to watch even more painful evidence of their loved ones. Sometimes there is time for mercy, and other times there needs to be full accountability and full justice.”

Many prosecutors would not have been brave enough to pursue third-degree murder, Storms said.

“But this case warranted a murder charge, as exhibited by the fact that there were extraordinary pieces of evidence that the jury didn’t even get to hear,” he said. “But they still said that this man murdered these young girls.”