An 18-year-old woman with no driver's license was speeding when she slammed into a residential building in a north Minneapolis neighborhood, killing one passenger and seriously injuring herself and another passenger, according to charges filed Tuesday.
Markesha W. Jones, of Brooklyn Center, was charged in Hennepin County District Court with criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular operation in connection with the crash late in the morning on March 11 near the intersection of N. 37th and Fremont avenues.
Jones was charged by summons. Court records do not list an attorney for her, and contact information for her was not immediately available.
Daviegh J.K. Lee, 15, of Minneapolis, was taken from the scene to North Memorial Health Hospital, where he died five days later.
According to the criminal complaint:
Officers arrived and saw the car against the multiunit residential building's brick wall, its roof crushed and three people trapped inside. The roof was taken off, and the two passengers were removed and hospitalized.
Jones was behind the wheel and not moving. She, too, was hospitalized and found to be paralyzed from the chest down and with collapsed lungs.
Data from the car revealed that she was driving 71 mph on northbound Fremont just before hitting a curb to her left, then went airborne after hitting a yard embankment.
City surveillance cameras captured Jones' vehicle slamming "into the wall roof first at an extremely high rate of speed before landing back on its wheelbase," the charges read.
She told police that she was having trouble with the power steering and had it checked for repairs days earlier.
Paul Walsh
