Christopher Yang said he often finds himself sitting in his car after pulling up to his Coon Rapids home and not wanting to go inside. It’s a place that he and his wife, Melinda Thao, bought together, where they were supposed to raise a family.
Waking up in the house is a reminder of what he lost, Yang said Friday in an Anoka County courtroom. He replays conversations in his mind that he had with Thao, who was his “support system and best friend” and “source of comfort.”
Sitting to Yang’s left was Makayla April Sua Richardson of Mounds View. On Aug. 18, Richardson, then 20, drove drunk in Coon Rapids without a valid license, ran a red light while also speeding and crashed into the couple’s SUV, killing Thao and their unborn child.
“I grapple with how to go on without them,” Yang told the court.
Anoka County District Judge Sean Gibbs went on to give Richardson two consecutive sentences: four years in prison for criminal vehicular homicide while under the influence of alcohol and five years of probation for criminal vehicular homicide while under the influence of alcohol. Probation will begin after her incarceration. She will receive credit for 193 days already served.
In January, Richardson pleaded guilty to the two charges. She entered the plea after an offer from the prosecution, who agreed to dismiss two other charges: criminal vehicular operation causing great bodily harm and DWI.
Assistant Anoka County Attorney Kelly Sinton asked the judge to give Richardson two consecutive four-year prison terms.
Richardson’s attorney, DeAundres Wilson, told the judge she is “particularly amenable to probation.” He said she does not have a prior criminal history — “not even a parking ticket” — and that she has shown remorse and accepted responsibility for her crimes.
Siblings witnessed crash
On Aug. 18, Richardson left a beach, where she drank alcohol, and was on her way to a friend’s house when she got a flat tire, and “though in retrospect that may have been divine intervention attempting to prevent her continued operation of a vehicle, she sought out another vehicle to drive,” Sinton in the state’s memo on sentencing, filed this week.
Richardson then went to her stepfather’s house and asked to use his 2006 Ford Super Duty F-350. He agreed, but told her to first unhitch a fully loaded enclosed trailer from the pickup, Sinton said Friday in court. “She chose not to. She chose to drive anyway. Her level of intoxication was staggering.”
Just before 9:30 p.m., Yang and Thao and three of her siblings had left a movie and were headed to get dinner, the couple in their 2023 Toyota Highlander SUV and the others following in another vehicle.
Richardson was headed west on Coon Rapids Boulevard alone in the 2006 Ford Super Duty F-350, still pulling the loaded trailer. The couple, with Yang driving, was traveling east on Coon Rapids Boulevard. With a green arrow to turn onto northbound Springbrook Drive, Yang began the left-hand turn. Richardson plowed into them.
Thao’s siblings witnessed the violent collision, and ran to the SUV. Thao was buckled in the front passenger seat, gasping for air, her older sister, Cindy Thao, told the court in a statement Friday.
Melinda Thao and Christopher Yang’s 2023 Toyota Highlander (Courtesy of the Anoka County Attorney’s Office)
“She wasn’t waking up when we called her, she was breathing slowly,” Thao recalled. “When I saw my sister lying there and saw how badly injured her arms and legs were, the thought of my sister dying crossed my mind.”
Melinda Thao and the unborn child were pronounced dead at Mercy Hospital, where Yang was hospitalized with broken ribs. An autopsy determined Yang’s cause of death to be blunt chest and abdominal trauma.
Richardson told responding officers that she had shared one can of an alcoholic seltzer with friends three to four hours earlier, and said she had a green light. Witnesses told police otherwise, that the couple had a green arrow and that Richardson went through the intersection against a red light.
An empty can of an alcoholic beverage was found inside the truck. She submitted to field-sobriety tests, which she failed, and blew a 0.18 BAC on a preliminary breath test. The legal limit to drive in Minnesota is 0.08.
Richardson was placed under arrest and transported to the hospital for a blood draw. A blood sample, taken nearly two hours after the crash, showed her alcohol concentration was 0.162.
Makayla April Sua Richardson (Courtesy of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office)
Richardson was given a learner’s permit in January 2024, but not a license to drive.
A crash reconstruction by the Minnesota State Patrol determined Richardson was driving the pickup truck between 63 and 70 mph — in a 50 mph zone — when it collided with the SUV, which was mid-turn and traveling 12 to 13 mph.
The weight of the trailer was found to be 3,700 pounds, with the F-350 weighing 7,600 pounds.
Long-awaited pregnancy
On Aug. 20, the day that Richardson was charged, Yang posted to YouTube a gender reveal video for their family and friends.
Yang and Melinda Thao had been trying to conceive for three years — and got a positive test in April.
The married couple, who were high school sweethearts, went to their first ultrasound on June 18 and found out their baby was 9 weeks and 2 days old. On July 13, they got back the baby’s gender — and decided to learn together while sitting in their vehicle during Yang’s lunch break.
Yang pulled up the results on his phone, looked over at his wife and took a deep breath.
“Don’t say anything,” Thao said during the gender reveal. “Just show me.”
Yang turned the phone in her direction.
“It’s a girl!” she said, then laughed.
In an Aug. 21 GoFundMe post, Yang wrote about the couple’s struggles to become parents.
“Melinda was so excited, she waited until I went on lunch break so we (could) look at the results together,” he said. “To our surprise, it was a GIRL! We were honestly happy regardless of the gender, we were more happy that the baby was healthy.”
He said their due date was Jan. 19, Melinda’s birthday.
They’d been together since 2013 and got married five years later after finishing college, finding stable jobs and buying a home in Coon Rapids, he said.
“Melinda worked so hard to uplift our lives to be filled with joy, love, and security,” he said. “She worked hard for us to buy a home, conceive a child, and have careers. This is just the tip of the iceberg of our story and it pains me to, now, explain why I am on this page to request for everyone’s help.”
Mother, driver address court
Thao was “strong and smart and independent,” her mother, Amy Thao, said Friday in court.
“My beautiful daughter is gone forever,” she said. “I will never get to hug my daughter again. At home … there is an empty space at the table, and an empty space in my heart.”
Melinda Thao was the “embodiment of kindness” who dreamed of a future where her children would grow up surrounded by love, friend, La Vang, said in a statement read by the prosecutor. “But she never got to see that future.”
Related Articles
Teens charged with entering high school in St. Paul, assaulting student
Mounds View shooting suspect arrested in South St. Paul
Hip-hop artist Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs pleads not guilty ahead of May sex trafficking trial
Former Philippines President Duterte appears by video link at International Criminal Court hearing
Mounds View police looking for ‘armed and dangerous’ shooting suspect
When given the opportunity to address the court, Richardson, who is a mother of a daughter, apologized for what she did and said she “thinks about all the things I could have done differently.”
“I know that my actions cannot be reversed, and my heart breaks every day that I wake up reminded of what I did,” she said. “Melinda was going to be a mommy, and it’s so not fair that the lives of Melinda and Leona were lost. Chris was going to be a dad, and I’m so sorry that that was taken from him.”
She said she prays every day for forgiveness, adding, “I know that this is not something that is easy to forgive. I have a hard time forgiving myself, and I just wish I could take everybody’s pain away.”
