LAS VEGAS (AP) — Former Las Vegas Raiders player Henry Ruggs pleaded guilty Wednesday to drunk driving his sports car at speeds of up to 156 miles per hour on a city street before causing a violent accident, in which a woman and her dog died.
“Guilty,” said the former NFL first-round draft pick, 24, who will avoid a trial and is expected to face three to 10 years in state prison Aug. 9 based on his plea with prosecutors. The minimum sentence of three years cannot be reduced by commuting the year and a half he spent under house arrest into time already served.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson cited possible legal obstacles to a conviction in court, said he had met with relatives of the late woman on several occasions and said the settlement with Ruggs “achieved our three main goals.”
Ruggs was convicted of drunk driving that resulted in death, faces jail time and cannot appeal his conviction and sentence, the district attorney-elect, a Democrat, said in a detailed written statement. “If someone dies as a result of the actions of a drunk driver, that’s the most serious charge the law allows.”
Ruggs declined to comment as he and a group of about nine people exited the courthouse following his brief court appearance. He remains at large pending conviction.
“Henry submitted his pleading today in the hope that it will advance the process of healing injuries sustained from the accident,” his attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in written comments. They promised a “fuller” statement after the verdict.
The Raiders dropped Ruggs while he was still hospitalized following the Nov. 2, 2021 accident that killed 23-year-old Tina Tintor and her dog Max.
Tintor’s mother, brother, uncle and several other family members were in the courtroom on Wednesday with their attorneys, Paul Albright and Farhan Naqvi.
In a statement issued after the hearing, the family thanked prosecutors for their work and said they looked forward to getting the case over with.
“Today, as we do every day, we remember Tina and Max and how they were taken from us on that fateful night,” the statement said. “No judgment will ever bring Tina and Max back, but we hope everyone learns from this avoidable incident so other families don’t suffer like we do.”
Tintor, 23, was a Serbian immigrant who graduated from a Las Vegas high school, worked at a Target store, wanted to be a computer programmer and was about to receive her U.S. citizenship, friends and family said after her death .
“The family appreciates privacy at this time of grief,” Naqvi later said in a written statement.
Ruggs’ girlfriend Je’nai Kilgo-Washington was with him in his 2020 Chevrolet Corvette and was also injured. Prosecutors said Ruggs sustained a leg injury and Kilgo-Washington sustained an arm injury. Kilgo-Washington and Ruggs have a daughter together, and Kilgo-Washington, as a victim, was uncooperative with prosecutors in the case.
Last week, Ruggs waived a long-delayed preliminary hearing and agreed to plead guilty to fatal driving while driving, a felony count and a misdemeanor count of involuntary manslaughter, which carries a six-month jail sentence in addition to his three to 10-year sentence.
Wolfson said shortly after the crash that if convicted, Ruggs faces a mandatory prison sentence of at least two years and could face more than 50 years in prison. The district attorney said investigators found that Ruggs drank with friends at an athletic and golf facility for several hours and may have stayed at a friend’s house for several more hours before he and Kilgo-Washington went home.
Since the accident, Ruggs’ attorneys have lost several attempts to challenge evidence, including that Ruggs had a blood alcohol level of 0.16% – twice the legal limit in Nevada – after the car accident that started a fire involving Tintor and her pet dog died.
Wolfson said in his statement that Ruggs may have avoided a conviction in court because Ruggs was not given a sobriety test after the accident, and his defense attorneys argued that Ruggs’ blood alcohol test was improperly performed at the hospital.
“There was virtually no other evidence that Ruggs was under the influence,” Wolfson says of the blood test.
“I realize that this finding is insufficient to punish Ruggs for the loss the Tintor family has suffered,” the district attorney admitted. “But there was a legitimate concern that a court would have concealed the result of the blood draw. We would have lost the drunk driving charge. We couldn’t take that risk.”
Police reported that airbag computer recordings showed the Corvette slowed slightly from 156 mph (251 km/h) to 127 mph (204 km/h) for seconds before crashing into Tintor’s Toyota Rav 4. The speed limit in the area was 45 mph (72 km/h).
Other charges against Ruggs were dismissed under the appeal agreement, including reckless driving, drunk driving causing serious injury to Kilgo-Washington, and a weapons misdemeanor charge that arose from police discovery of a loaded pistol in his wrecked Corvette . Ruggs agreed to forfeit the gun.
Ruggs posted $150,000 bail for his release from prison after leaving the hospital and remained under house arrest under strict conditions including electronic surveillance and breathalyzers. A court order allowed him to go to a gym twice a week for three hours of physical training.
Ruggs’ full name is Henry James Ruggs III. Raised in Montgomery, Alabama, he won an NCAA championship with the Crimson Tide before being drafted by the Raiders in 2020. He signed a four-year rookie contract reportedly worth more than $16 million and went on to become a star NFL player before the crash. According to records, in April 2021, he bought a $1.1 million home not far from the scene of the accident.