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.
What has infuriated the victims' families most is not just the 11-year sentence itself, but how little of it Gates will actually serve behind bars. Court records show she accumulated more than three years of pre-sentence credit through jail time and electronic monitoring, despite repeatedly violating her curfew, arriving late to court, and failing drug tests while out on pretrial release. Those credits mean Gates will serve less than four years in prison per victim, the station reported.
How the Sentence Stacks Up Under Illinois Law
Under Illinois Vehicle Code 625 ILCS 5/11-501, aggravated DUI causing two or more deaths is a Class 2 felony carrying a sentencing range of 6 to 28 years, with probation barred and a mandatory minimum of 85% of the sentence served, according to Lafata Law LLC. Felony DUI charges also require prosecutors to prove that impairment was a proximate cause of the deaths.
A recent DuPage County case shows how differently these sentences can land. In November 2025, a judge sentenced 39-year-old Christine Brocious to 21 years in prison, with 85% of that time required to be served, after she pleaded guilty to Class 2 felony aggravated DUI for a 2023 crash that killed two siblings, according to FOX 32 Chicago. Prosecutors in that case had pushed for the maximum 28-year term.
A Dangerous Stretch of the Eisenhower
This is not an isolated incident along the corridor. In May, another fatal multi-vehicle DUI crash struck the outbound Eisenhower Expressway near South Ashland Avenue when a 21-year-old driver rear-ended a vehicle, killing a passenger and injuring six others, as Hoodline previously reported; that driver was charged with multiple counts of felony aggravated DUI.
The pattern extends beyond one highway. Illinois Department of Transportation data for 2024 shows Cook County led the state with 36 alcohol-related traffic fatalities, and drivers aged 21 to 34 accounted for 35.5% of all statewide alcohol-involved fatal crashes, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. Nationally, alcohol-impaired driving caused 11,904 deaths in 2024, roughly 30% of all traffic fatalities and about one death every 44 minutes, per the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, even as those fatalities dropped 3.9% nationwide from 2023 to 2024.
For Cox and Sherwood's families, those statistics offer little comfort. Their anger centers on the gap between what Illinois law allows and what Gates will actually serve, and on the string of violations she racked up while out on pretrial release that still counted toward reducing her time behind bars.
