Woman charged in fiery crash on Easter that killed 1, seriously hurt another

The driver of a vehicle that crashed and caught fire, killing one person, early on Easter morning in Minneapolis is now facing criminal charges.

Prosecutors charged 19-year-old Mackenzie Rose Lene with criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular operation on Friday.

Minneapolis police say officers were called to a single-vehicle crash near East 41st Street and Hiawatha Avenue just after 12:30 a.m. on March 31. There, they found a sedan that had apparently struck a tree and started on fire.

Additionally, court documents note that a male victim was lying in the road and another male victim was disoriented and bleeding. The victim on the road — identified by police as 20-year-old Cole Thompson of Blaine — was later pronounced dead; the other victim suffered a concussion, serious burns and three broken ribs, requiring multiple surgeries and skin grafts. He remained hospitalized as of Friday.

Residents of a nearby apartment building told officers they were just getting home when they heard an explosion and ran toward the street, court documents add. That’s when they saw a woman and a man outside the sedan and helped pull a person in the back seat out of the car. However, the man and woman they saw then climbed over a wall and left the scene as the woman screamed, “it’s my car, it’s my car, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Charging documents state that the vehicle was registered to Lene, who lives less than a mile away from the crash scene, and both the victim who was seriously hurt and the other passenger told investigators Lene was driving at the time of the crash.

The hospitalized passenger said he and Thompson had been at a birthday party earlier that night when Lene and the other man met up with them. When they were ready to leave, they all got into Lene’s vehicle because they’d been drinking and the victim remembered Lene driving fast and aggressively.

After the crash, surveillance video from the area caught Lene and one of the passengers walking away from the scene, according to a criminal complaint. Audio captured Lene saying, “I’m going home as soon as possible, I have to talk to my dad … ruined my life, you don’t understand.” When the man tells her she’ll be OK and he’ll help her find her car in the morning, she responds, “It’s burnt the (expletive) up!”

Lene made her first court appearance Friday afternoon and her next hearing is scheduled for May 30.

She faces up to 10 years in prison on the higher charge and five years on the lesser one.