The morning Tina Tintor and Raiders star Henry Ruggs crossed paths
When Tina Tintor crossed paths with Raiders star Henry Ruggs on Tuesday morning, both were just miles from their homes.
Clark County property records show that Tintor and Ruggs have lived down the road from each other since at least April, when the once promising young football player purchased his $1.1 million home in Del Rey Estates, about 3 miles north of the house that Tintor’s family has owned for nearly two decades.
Neither would make it home that morning.
Two Las Vegas police reports related to the crash were released Wednesday, offering a clearer picture of a deadly encounter that upended the lives of two families and sent shockwaves throughout the NFL.
In the pre-dawn hours, with a waning crescent moon hanging over the Las Vegas Valley, Tintor drove her Toyota RAV4 along Rainbow Boulevard, her dog Max in the back seat, toward her family’s neighborhood lined with houses built in the 1970s.
At the same time, according to the reports, a flashy Chevrolet Corvette Stingray driven by the 22-year-old football player zoomed down the busy road, inching closer to Tintor’s SUV. His longtime girlfriend, Kiara Kilgo-Washington, was next to him in the passenger seat, police have said.
The couple, who share a young daughter, had been drinking mai tais at Topgolf Las Vegas hours earlier, according to videos posted to their social media accounts and an impaired driving report prepared by police.
His girlfriend later told investigators they went to a friend’s house after leaving Topgolf.
The green Corvette caught the attention of two men as it blew through the intersection of Rainbow Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue: Alexander Hart, a security guard for a nearby condominium complex, and Glen Allen Moffitt, who was at a Chevron gas station on the street corner.
Moffitt would later tell Las Vegas police that he “guessed the speed of the Corvette to be over 100 mph.”
According to Ruggs’ girlfriend, as they approached Tintor’s SUV, he slammed on the brakes and yelled, “What is this guy doing?”
Hart told police he heard a crash soon after seeing the Corvette speed by, and he jumped into his security vehicle, headed toward the scene.
‘Such violent force’
The sound that Hart heard was the Corvette slamming into the back of Tintor’s SUV “with such violent force,” a Clark County prosecutor said Wednesday, that the RAV4 burst into flames.
Ruggs, who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, was driving 156 mph mere seconds before the crash, over 110 mph above the speed limit in the residential area, according to his arrest report. When the Corvette’s airbags deployed, it had “slowed” to 127 mph.
The impact sent the RAV4 hurtling down the northbound lanes of Rainbow Boulevard for more than 570 feet before it came to a rest just south of Spring Valley Parkway, the arrest report states. The crumpled two-door Corvette spun out for nearly 520 feet before stopping near a block wall.
As the vehicle fire grew near the intersection, a Dodge Durango pulled over to help, according to the reports. The occupants of the Dodge were soon joined by Hart, the security guard.
In total, the records show, at least three bystanders had stopped at the intersection to help Tintor.
When Hart arrived at the crash site, according to the arrest report, he heard screams coming from the RAV4. The driver was still alive, he told police, but she was pinned inside the SUV. None of the bystanders could pull her out.
Eventually, they had to back away as smoke and heat from flames choked the RAV4. Tintor and her 3-year-old golden retriever died in the SUV, authorities said.
Tintor was 23. She had lived in Las Vegas since she was a baby, according to her family.
Michael Leone, a longtime resident of the area, watched these scenes play out from his backyard while on the phone with a 911 dispatcher.
Leone was in bed when he heard a “loud boom,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Tuesday.
When he peered over his backyard wall overseeing Rainbow Boulevard, he said, a site of wreckage came into view: The car fire and the mangled Corvette, which was blasting loud music, drowned out only by a female voice screaming for help.
As the bystanders tried to help Tintor, Ruggs hung out of the driver’s side of the Corvette, with his feet on the floorboard and “his body laying on the road,” according to the reports. Both he and his girlfriend suffered serious injuries and were treated at University Medical Center.
When police arrived at the crash site, Ruggs refused to participate in a field sobriety test, the reports state. Instead, two blood draws were later taken at the hospital. A prosecutor on Wednesday said that the football player’s blood alcohol level was more than twice Nevada’s legal limit for drivers.
‘A terrible, terrible collision’
Once at the hospital, Ruggs was placed in trauma bed No. 1, where investigators would attempt to interview him around 4:30 a.m.
According to the impaired driving report, Ruggs repeatedly yelled “No!” from his hospital bed when investigators asked if he remembered what had happened.
“I asked Ruggs if he could open his eyes, to which he did not respond,” police wrote in the report. “I asked Ruggs where he was going, to which he stated he was going home.”
Police noted in the report that he was slurring his words.
Ruggs was released from the hospital Tuesday afternoon and was booked into the Clark County Detention Center shortly after 2:10 p.m. He faces charges of DUI resulting in death and reckless driving.
By Tuesday evening, the Raiders would announce that Ruggs had been released from the team, ending his career with the organization in a one-sentence statement.
He faced Tintor’s relatives for the first time during his initial court appearance Wednesday morning in Las Vegas Justice Court. He wore a neck brace and was guided into a basement courtroom in a wheelchair.
“The family’s torn apart, as anybody would be,” Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said after the hearing. “This was a terrible, terrible collision, so they’re mourning their loss. They’re grieving. They’re mad.”
Meanwhile, cars again traversed Rainbow Boulevard more than 24 hours after the collision. Bystanders unaware of the crash might wonder what the neon markings on the pavement represent.
For several hundred yards, the lines tracked the path of the two vehicles involved in the crash. Plastic debris and remnants of car parts remained scattered throughout, while tiny shards of glass were seen where the wreckage sat for more than 12 hours on Tuesday.
A small memorial consisting of two flower bouquets and a candle rested on the sidewalk.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writers Ricardo Torres-Cortez and Katelyn Newberg contributed to this report.