Woman receives 4-year sentence for fatal drunken-driving crash in Maple Grove
April Fayth Oleary (Hennepin County Jail)
A judge has sentenced a woman to four years in prison for a 2021 drunken-driving crash in Maple Grove that killed one person and injured two others.
April Fayth O’Leary was sentenced Wednesday in Hennepin County District Court. She had pleaded guilty to charges of criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular operation in February.
The three-vehicle crash happened early the morning of Sept. 12, 2021, on County Road 81. A criminal complaint states O’Leary was driving a Volvo S60 and had rear-ended a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which then careened into oncoming traffic and hit a Toyota Sienna.
The Toyota rolled into a ditch, and the driver, 67-year-old Phousalinh Khounpanya of Dayton, was pronounced dead at the scene. The man driving the Jeep had his left leg crushed and needed to be extricated from his car.
O’Leary was visibly drunk, the complaint states, and her blood-alcohol concentration registered at 0.19, more than twice the legal limit.
A crash reconstruction indicated she was traveling at 124 mph at the time of the crash before hitting the Jeep. The speed limit on that road is 55 mph.