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Willie Alonzo Sparkman Jr. pleaded guilty to second-degree felony murder in the May 5, 2021 shooting death of cab driver Abdullahi Mohamed Abdullahi in Moorhead, Minnesota, and was sentenced to 12 and a half years in Minnesota prison.

Abdullahi, 24, drove for Doyle's Yellow Checker Cab in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Sparkman was 18 and lived in Moorhead with his girlfriend, Kristy Thi Vo, who was 17. Neither knew Abdullahi. According to the criminal complaint, Sparkman and Vo had started robbing people to raise rent money. They attempted a robbery in Fargo at about 11:50 p.m. on May 4, 2021, and carried out another at about 2:50 a.m. on May 5.

At about 3:20 a.m. on Wednesday, May 5, Vo called Doyle's Yellow Checker Cab to an apartment complex at 3015 20th Street South. Abdullahi took the fare. Surveillance video recorded a figure walking to the driver's window as the cab arrived, then running to a red Toyota Corolla that Vo drove away. Abdullahi, shot once with a .45 caliber round, drove across 20th Street South and over railroad tracks before the cab left the road and crashed. A suspicious vehicle call came in at 3:27 a.m. Officers arrived at 3:59 a.m. and found him dead. Investigators recovered one .45 caliber shell casing in the parking lot, a few feet from the camera that recorded the shooting.

That video, footage from a grocery store the pair had visited earlier, and the casing led investigators to Sparkman and Vo. Both were picked up on May 5 and interviewed separately. Vo said Sparkman had taken two handguns from her, including a .45, and that she had given him a knife, but she denied knowing he had a gun.

Sparkman was first interviewed on May 5, 2021, at the Fargo Police Department by investigators from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Moorhead Police Department. He described his movements the night before and denied shooting Abdullahi as detectives confronted him with the video and Vo's statement. About two hours into the interview, he broke down and said he did not mean for it to happen. He also said a gun would be found at his residence, about a mile southwest of the shooting. Investigators interviewed him again on May 6.

Clay County District Judge Tammy Merkins later threw out the May 5 session. In a decision reported on March 8, 2022, she ruled that investigators violated Sparkman's right to remain silent when they continued questioning him after he said, roughly 41 minutes into the interview, "This session is over, bro," "I don't have nothing else to say" and "Let me go home." Merkins barred the confession and the rest of the May 5 interview from trial, but ruled that Sparkman's May 6 statements were voluntary and admissible.

Clay County prosecutors charged Sparkman with second-degree murder, attempted aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery. He was sentenced on November 7, 2022, and Abdullahi's family told the court the sentence was too short. Vo, charged as an adult, pleaded guilty on June 12, 2023, to aiding and abetting second-degree murder under an agreement calling for 128 months. After a 2023 change in Minnesota law narrowed accomplice liability for murder, prosecutors reduced the count to first-degree aiding and abetting assault. She was sentenced on August 23, 2023, to 7 and a half years with credit for 839 days served. Sparkman was also prosecuted federally over two Fargo robberies of Doyle's cab drivers, one on April 3, 2021, and one on May 5, 2021. Both involved threats to shoot the driver, and neither driver was hurt. He pleaded guilty to two counts of interference with commerce by threats or violence. On April 10, 2025, U.S. District Judge Peter Welte sentenced him to 7 years, to be served after the Minnesota sentence.

The video is a police interview-room recording running about 110 minutes, with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved before the interview begins. Its content matches descriptions of the May 5 session, but the recording is not identified as either the May 5 or May 6 interview.

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Part 2 of 2 of the recording described above.