A Cook County judge sentenced 21-year-old Ashanti Gates to 11 years in prison Thursday for a drunk driving crash that killed 18-year-old Erik Cox of Rolling Meadows and 18-year-old Shaelyn Sherwood of Hoffman Estates on the Eisenhower Expressway in June 2024, a sentence the victims’ families say does not come close to justice for their children.
Gates pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated DUI under a plea agreement that dropped charges of reckless homicide and child endangerment, according to CBS News. Cook County Judge Pamela Stratigakis handed down the 11-year term, and the victims’ families told the station they believe the system failed them every step of the process and that the sentence simply is not enough.
The crash happened around 3 a.m. on June 2, 2024, on the shoulder of the westbound Eisenhower Expressway near Paulina Street, where Cox and Sherwood had pulled over to change a flat tire on a white Toyota sedan after spending Saturday night in Chicago with a friend. Court disclosures showed Gates was driving 22 mph over the speed limit with her headlights off when she struck the parked sedan and the two teens standing outside it. She registered a blood alcohol concentration more than twice the legal limit, and investigators found an open vodka bottle with plastic cups in her car, along with five passengers, including her 4-year-old son.
A Preventable Tragedy, Survivor Says
Noah Browder, then 18, was the third teen at the scene that night and the only one who walked away unharmed. He testified that he and his two friends had safely pulled off the highway with their hazard lights on, and he called the collision entirely preventable, per the same account from CBS News…