Abigail Anderson’s family has had many struggles dealing with her August 2021 killing, when a driver struck the 29-year-old as she walked on grass by the University of Minnesota’s golf course and soccer stadium in Falcon Heights.

On Friday, her father wanted to let Ramsey County Judge Andrew Gordon know about one such struggle before he sentenced the driver, Melinda Jean Dotray, for the killing.

Abigail Anderson (Courtesy of the Anderson family)

He said they had just buried his daughter next to her sister, Gabriele “Gabe” Grunewald, a professional runner who died of cancer two years earlier at age 32. While going through Anderson’s things in her apartment, he found a note on the refrigerator.

“It was a handwritten note about the plans that she was making to get married,” her father, Kim Anderson, said in his victim impact statement. She wrote about what she would wear — her sister’s wedding dress — and the location — her parents’ home, in a “place in the woods that was particularly beautiful to her.”

He said her killing will continue to devastate her family, and asked the judge: “Can you put yourself in our place?”

Gordon went on to sentence Dotray to four years in prison on one count of criminal vehicular homicide, which she pleaded guilty to in September for the Aug. 14, 2021, crash near Larpenteur and Cleveland avenues. Paramedics took Anderson to Regions Hospital, where she died from multiple traumatic injuries that night.

Dotray, 47, had illegal drugs in her system when she drove more than 60 mph in a pickup, smashed into a parked car and careened off the road. She hit and then ran over Anderson, who was walking on grass to watch her boyfriend coach a youth soccer game at the university’s stadium.

Anderson grew up in Perham, Minn., and had run track in high school and the U like her sister. She lived in Minneapolis and worked as a pediatric nurse for Children’s Minnesota. She was in her second year of training to become a certified nurse practitioner.

The judge denied a downward departure to probation, as her attorney requested, saying that “it would not fairly recognize the life and the soul that was lost, that it would unduly depreciate Abigail Anderson, who died on that roadside that day.”

Dozed off

A number of witnesses told investigators what they saw during the crash, which occurred shortly before 7 p.m. A golfer said “he heard a thunderous collision” and saw Anderson fly 30 to 40 feet in the air before landing in the golf course. The truck’s driver made “an aggressive U-turn” and he thought she drove over Anderson.

A person at the soccer game said halftime had just begun and everyone in the stands looked in the direction of the crash when they heard it. He asked the person sitting next to him, “Oh my God — is that a person in the grass?” and said he saw Anderson move a little before the truck ran over Anderson.

Meanwhile, a passenger in a vehicle traveling on Cleveland Avenue said she saw Anderson walking next to the fence on the grass because there wasn’t a sidewalk. She said Anderson was about 10 feet away when the pickup hit the car, and both vehicles struck Anderson.

Witnesses said Dotray drove back onto Cleveland Avenue, and a man who thought she was going to drive away removed the key from the ignition.

Deputies detained Dotray after the crash and she dozed off in the back of a squad car.

Melinda Jean Dotray (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

“Dotray said she felt bad and that she wasn’t trying to flee the scene — she was just trying to get off the golf course,” according to the complaint. She also told deputies that she had nodded off and should have stopped, but was too tired.

A review of data from Dotray’s pickup indicated it was traveling as fast as 64 mph in a 40 mph zone, and there was no evidence of braking before she crashed into the parked car.

Dotray’s only criminal conviction in Minnesota was for driving with an expired license in 2013. She had a valid driver’s license at the time of the crash, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

Four months later, after a toxicology report came back and the accident reconstruction was completed, Dotray was charged with two counts of criminal vehicular homicide and one count each of manslaughter and drug possession. Prosecutors added a third-degree murder charge in February 2022.

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Results of Dotray’s blood tested by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension showed amphetamine, methamphetamine and fentanyl in her system, the charges said.

Prosecutors were unable to support the murder charge, “where we must prove she had a ‘depraved mind,’” Dennis Gerhardstein, county attorney’s office spokesman, said after her plea. “The original (criminal vehicular homicide) charge was the appropriate charge for the conduct on the day in question.”

Additional charges

Dotray picked up two additional criminal cases — both in Fillmore County last year — after being released from the Ramsey County jail on a $500,000 bond.

In January, she was charged with felony theft by check and issuing a dishonored check, also a felony.

She was charged in May with felony possession of a controlled substance (methamphetamine) and five other drug-related offenses, as well as a misdemeanor charge of receiving stolen property, after sheriff’s deputies executed a search warrant at a house she shared with her boyfriend.

According to the criminal complaint, deputies looking for stolen items found methamphetamine, hypodermic needles and drug paraphernalia on top of a dresser in a bedroom, which did not have a door. “These items would have been accessible to any of the three children … that live in the house,” the complaint said.

Her attorney John Conard said Friday that she is now sober, and has reached plea agreements in the two Fillmore County cases that call for probation.

Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Keelan Ryan noted how the presentence investigation says her sobriety began “nearly two years after the incident, your honor, and right around the time she picked up the Fillmore County charges.”

Gordon acknowledged her sobriety before handing down the sentence, saying: “That is not easy, you should be congratulated on that.”

He said that on the other side, “it doesn’t appear to me that this particular incident … was enough to get you to sober up, which is disappointing.”

Dotray apologized in her brief remarks in court Friday.

“There’s nothing that I can say that takes away what happened. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t carry regret and shame and guilt for the bad choices that I made,” she said. “And I’m just truly, truly sorry, and I’ll always be sorry for what happened that day.”

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