A man who was driving with a revoked license when he fatally struck a Burnsville priest in Rosemount in 2021 pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular homicide on Tuesday.

Trejean Derrell Curry, 28, of St. Paul, had been previously convicted nine times for driving without a license prior to hitting the Rev. Dennis Keith Dempsey as the 73-year-old rode his bike on the shoulder of County Road 42 on Oct. 25, 2021, according to court records.

Trejean Derrell Curry (Courtesy of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office)

Dempsey, who served the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for 41 years, was a newly installed priest at the Church of the Risen Savior in Burnsville. Before that, he spent 15 years at the Church of St. Dominic in Northfield.

Court records show that Curry continued to drive without a license after he was charged in Dempsey’s death and released from jail on a $75,000 bond, with conditions. Curry was cited for driving after revocation this past September after he was caught on a surveillance camera driving away from the Dakota County Courthouse in Hastings following a hearing on the criminal vehicular homicide-gross negligence charge.

For pleading guilty to Dempsey’s death, prosecutors agreed to a stayed prison sentence, up to five years of probation and a 150-day jail sentence, which could be served in 30-day increments annually during probation. Judge Dannia Edwards set sentencing for Feb. 15.

Tire scuff mark on license plate

Curry was driving his girlfriend’s Ford Fusion west on County Road 42 near Auburn Avenue about 3:20 p.m. when he struck Dempsey from behind, the March 2022 criminal complaint says. Dempsey, of Apple Valley, died at the scene.

County Road 42 is a four-lane road with two eastbound and two westbound lanes separated by a grassy median. Curry told police he was driving in the right-most westbound lane at the time of the crash, and that Dempsey swerved in front of him.

However, the Minnesota State Patrol determined that Dempsey was on the shoulder of the road when Curry veered from the travel lane and struck him at between 54 and 63 mph, according to the complaint. The speed limit on that stretch of County Road 42 is 55 mph.

The State Patrol’s crash analysis found that the skid marks from Curry’s car were to the right of the solid white line that separates the travel lane from the shoulder, and that the skid mark made by Dempsey’s bicycle when he was struck was near the center of the shoulder. The car’s front license plate had a bike tire scuff mark and indentation.

A month before the crash, Curry was convicted of speeding for driving 100 mph in a 70-mph zone and of driving after revocation in July 2021. He was convicted of driving after revocation three times in both 2018 and 2019 and once in March 2021.

Four decades of service

According to the Catholic Spirit newspaper, Dempsey grew up in Minneapolis and was ordained in the Twin Cities archdiocese in 1980.

He also served as pastor of St. Francis de Sales and St. James in St. Paul from 1999 to 2004. After that, he went to St. Dominic in Northfield, serving as pastor from 2004 to 2019. In July 2019, he left to work a second time for the archdiocesan mission in Venezuela, where he served from 1993 to 1999 and learned Spanish. Dempsey returned to the Twin Cities in June in advance of his Burnsville assignment.

Other parishes he served included St. Pius X in White Bear Lake (1980-1984), St. Wenceslaus in New Prague (1984-1988), St. Michael in St. Michael (1988-1993) and Annunciation in Hazelwood in rural Rice County (2014-2019).

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