Henry Ruggs faces up to 10 years in jail after pleading guilty in fatal DUI crash

Ex-Las Vegas Raiders player Henry Ruggs pleaded guilty Wednesday to driving his sports car drunk at speeds up to 156mph on a city street before causing a fiery crash that killed a woman and her dog.

“Guilty,” said the former first-round NFL draft pick, 24, who will avoid trial and is expected to be sentenced on 9 August to three to 10 years in state prison under terms of his plea deal with prosecutors. The minimum three-year sentence cannot be reduced by converting the year and a half that he has spent on house arrest to time already served.

Ruggs and his attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, declined immediate comment and left the courthouse with a group of about nine people following the brief court appearance.

The Raiders dropped Ruggs while he was still hospitalized from the predawn 2 November 2021, crash that killed 23-year-old Tina Tintor.

Tintor’s mother, brother and several other family members were in the courtroom Wednesday but departed with their attorney, Farhan Naqvi, without comment.

Ruggs’ girlfriend, Je’nai Kilgo-Washington, was with him in the Corvette and also was injured. Prosecutors said Ruggs suffered a leg injury and Kilgo-Washington received an arm injury. Kilgo-Washington and Ruggs have a daughter together, and Kilgo-Washington was not cooperative with prosecutors as a victim in the case.

Last week, Ruggs waived a long-delayed preliminary hearing with his agreement to plead guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol, causing death, a felony, and a misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charge carrying a six-month jail sentence that will be folded in with his three-to-ten year prison term.

Prosecutor Eric Bauman told the local judge who moved the case to state court last week that