Sakeena Khaadi, a 23-year-old woman from Horace, North Dakota, was shot and killed on the morning of Wednesday, November 5, 2025, inside the apartment building where she lived with her boyfriend and his young child. Deputies and rescue crews were dispatched just before 8 a.m. to an address on Jacks Way after a flurry of 911 calls reported a woman down with a gunshot wound and a man outside the building with blood on his hands.
First responders found Sakeena lying in the hallway of the complex, gravely injured, as residents tried desperately to perform lifesaving measures. Despite their efforts and those of paramedics, she was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy later determined that she died from a single gunshot wound: the bullet first passed through her left forearm before entering her chest, an injury pattern consistent with her raising her arm in front of her body at the moment the shot was fired.
The hallway where she fell was only steps from the apartment she shared with 21-year-old Derrick Lobbo and his two-year-old child. Inside, investigators found a 9mm handgun on the floor near the kitchen island, along with a magazine and a spent shell casing in the living room. Blood droplets were visible on the couch and on the floor, suggesting that some of the violence had unfolded inside the unit before Sakeena collapsed in the corridor outside. During a sweep of the apartment, deputies discovered Lobbo's toddler alone and unharmed but disturbingly close to the firearm and to alcohol and marijuana left within reach. That discovery would later become central to the neglect and endangerment allegations that were filed against him.
In the chaotic minutes after the shooting, accounts from witnesses and court documents paint a picture of confusion and panic. One caller told dispatchers that a man with blood on his hands had said “the gun went off and hit the female in the chest.” Others reported seeing a distressed man running and yelling outside the building. According to investigators, Lobbo himself called 911 around 7:52 a.m. to report that his girlfriend had been hurt and needed help, and he also went to a nearby Sanford clinic in Horace, seeking assistance and alerting staff to the shooting before running back toward the apartment complex. Deputies arriving on scene secured the building, separated the child from the area where medics were working on Sakeena, and began a homicide investigation that quickly focused on the events inside that apartment.
By the next day, Cass County Sheriff Jesse Jahner held a press conference at the courthouse, publicly identifying the victim as Sakeena Khaadi and confirming that she had lived in the apartment with Lobbo and his child. He described the case as a “very active and ongoing investigation” but emphasized that investigators believed the shooting was an isolated incident tied to the people involved, with no broader threat to the community. At that stage, Lobbo was being held in the Cass County Jail on preliminary charges of reckless endangerment involving a dangerous weapon, child neglect, and several outstanding warrants, including driving under suspension and marijuana possession, while detectives and the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation continued to gather evidence and interview witnesses.
Within days, the picture sharpened into formal accusations. On November 10, Cass County prosecutors charged Derrick Lobbo with manslaughter, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment with a firearm, and child neglect in connection with Sakeena's death. Court filings state that Lobbo admitted to deputies he had possession of the gun when it discharged, striking her, while witnesses and 911 callers recounted him saying that the gun had simply “gone off.” The medical examiner's findings about the bullet's path reinforced the image of a close-range shooting inside a home where a child was present and unprotected. At his court appearance, prosecutors portrayed him as a serious risk and requested a high bond, pointing to the gravity of the charges and his attempts to leave the immediate scene to seek help elsewhere. His defense attorney, meanwhile, argued that the shooting was an accident, stressing Lobbo's community ties and describing him as devastated and remorseful. As of the most recent reports, he remains charged but not convicted, and the case continues through the courts with no other suspects publicly identified.
Beyond the legal proceedings, Sakeena's death sent ripples of grief through the small but growing community around Horace and Fargo. A memorial page on a gun-violence remembrance site lists her among those “lost to gun violence” on November 5, 2025, while an online fundraiser organized by colleagues of her older sister describes her as a talented, bright young woman with “so much life in her,” taken from her family without warning. Friends, coworkers, and strangers alike have donated toward her funeral expenses and lit virtual candles in her memory, small gestures of love and outrage in the face of a sudden, preventable death. As investigators and attorneys argue in court over intent, negligence, and responsibility, those who knew her are left with a simpler truth: a young woman who should have had years ahead of her instead died on the floor of her own hallway, and a child who once shared that home will grow up with both the absence of Sakeena and the shadow of the case that followed.
