A 26-year-old Osseo man was drunk when he got on a Minneapolis interstate the wrong way and killed two young adults in another car, according to charges filed Thursday.
Quoc Thanh Tran was charged in Hennepin County District Court with two counts of criminal vehicular homicide in connection with the crash about 1:35 a.m. on Sept. 26. Tran remains jailed in lieu of $250,000 bail ahead of a Nov. 20 court appearance.
Driver Diana Rojas Martinez, 18, of Minneapolis, and her passenger, 19-year-old Christopher Jahmar Bunay, also of Minneapolis, were killed in the crash on eastbound Interstate 94 between Lowry and 26th Avenues N.
Both were graduates of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis. A statement from the school soon after the crash described the two as "fierce friends [and] hardworking students."
According to the charges, surveillance video detected Tran's car going the wrong way on a downtown Minneapolis street and then continuing west on eastbound I-94.
A few minutes later, Tran's car hits Martinez's vehicle "head-on with no offset," the criminal complaint read.
Emergency responders declared Martinez and Bunay dead at the scene. Tran was hospitalized at North Memorial Medical Center with what were initially described as critical injuries.
A trooper went to the hospital to collect blood to test Tran's degree of intoxication. The trooper detected an odor alcohol from Tran and saw that his eyes "were very bloodshot," the complaint continued. Results from the blood test are pending.
