A Cook County judge sentenced Ashanti Gates, 21, to 11 years in prison on 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 that the victims’ families say falls short of justice for their children.
According to CBS News, Gates pled guilty to two counts of aggravated DUI in exchange for the dismissal of reckless murder and child endangerment charges. Cook County Judge Pamela Stratigakis handed down the 11-year sentence, and the victims’ family told the station that they believe the system failed them at every stage of the process and that the sentence is simply insufficient.
The collision occurred around 3 a.m. on June 2, 2024, on the shoulder of the westbound Eisenhower Expressway near Paulina Street, when Cox and Sherwood had stopped to change a flat tire on a white Toyota vehicle after spending Saturday nite in Chicago with a friend. According to court documents, Gates was traveling 22 mph over the speed limit with her headlights turned off when she struck the parked automobile and the two teenagers standing outside it. She had a blood alcohol level more than double the legal limit, and investigators discovered an open vodka bottle and plastic cups in her car, along with five passengers, including her four-year-old son.
Noah Browder, then 18, was the third youngster on the scene that nite, and the only one who escaped uninjured. He testified that he and his two buddies had safely driven off the highway with their warning lights on, and that the crash was absolutely foreseeable, according to CBS News.
What has upset the victims’ relatives the most is not just Gates’ 11-year sentence, but how little of it he will really serve. Court documents show she earned more than three years of pre-sentence credit thru jail time and electronic monitoring, despite routinely breaching her curfew, coming late to court, and failing drug tests while on pretrial release. According to the station, these credits mean that Gates will serve fewer than four years in prison for each victim.
According to Lafata Law LLC, aggravated DUI resulting in two or more deaths is a Class 2 felony punishable by 6 to 28 years in prison, with probation forbidden and a statutory minimum of 85% of the term completed. Prosecutors must additionally prove that impairment was a proximate cause of the deaths when filing felony DUI charges.
A recent DuPage County case demonstrates how diverse these penalties can be. Christine Brocious, 39, was sentenced to 21 years in prison in November 2025, with 85% of that time to be served, after pleading guilty to Class 2 felony aggravated DUI in a 2023 crash that killed two siblings, according to FOX 32 Chicago. Prosecutors in the instance argued for the maximum 28-year sentence.
This is not a unique incidence on the route. Another fatal multi-vehicle DUI crash occurred on the outbound Eisenhower Expressway near South Ashland Avenue in May, when a 21-year-old driver rear-ended a vehicle, killing one passenger and injuring six others, as previously reported by Hoodline. The driver was charged with multiple counts of felony aggravated DUI.
The pattern extends beyond a single route. According to Illinois Department of Transportation figures for 2024, Cook County led the state with 36 alcohol-related traffic fatalities, with drivers aged 21 to 34 accounting for 35.5% of all statewide alcohol-involved fatal crashes. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, alcohol-impaired driving killed 11,904 people countrywide in 2024, accounting for almost 30% of all traffic fatalities and one fatality every 44 minutes, despite a 3.9% decrease in fatalities from 2023 to 2024.
These figures provide little consolation to Cox and Sherwood’s families. Their rage stems from the disparity between what Illinois law allows and what Gates will actually serve, as well as the number of offenses she committed while on pretrial release that counted toward lowering her time in prison.
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