Henry Ruggs #
Introduction #
Henry Ruggs III (born January 24, 1999) was a Las Vegas Raiders receiver and the first wideout taken in the 2020 NFL draft, 12th overall out of Alabama. On November 2, 2021, he crashed his Chevrolet Corvette into the rear of a Toyota RAV4 in Spring Valley, just outside Las Vegas, killing the 23-year-old driver, Tina Tintor, and her golden retriever, Max. The Raiders released him the same day, and after he pleaded guilty to DUI resulting in death and vehicular manslaughter, a judge sentenced him on August 9, 2023 to three to ten years in Nevada state prison.
Background Information #
Ruggs grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, attended Robert E. Lee High School, and starred at Alabama, where he helped the Crimson Tide win the College Football Playoff National Championship in the 2017 season. He ran a 4.27-second 40-yard dash at the 2020 NFL Combine, the fastest time of that year’s event, and the Raiders made him the 12th overall pick, signing him to a fully guaranteed four-year contract worth $16.67 million.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation #
During the predawn hours of November 2, 2021, police digital evidence showed Ruggs driving at 156 mph at about 3:39 a.m. when he slammed into the Toyota RAV4 driven by Tina Tintor on a Las Vegas city street. The collision ignited the SUV’s fuel tank, and the Clark County coroner determined that Tintor and Max died of thermal injuries as the vehicle burned. Hours earlier, Ruggs and his girlfriend Kiara Je’Na’i Kilgo-Washington had been drinking at a Topgolf on the Las Vegas Strip; investigators obtained a receipt showing his group’s $450 tab included 20 drinks for four people, and the couple left after midnight in the Corvette. Ruggs and Kilgo-Washington — his fiancee and the mother of his daughter — were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, and the Raiders cut him while he was still hospitalized.
A blood test taken about two hours after the crash put his blood alcohol content at 0.161%, roughly twice Nevada’s legal limit, and police said he refused a field sobriety test, which his attorney David Chesnoff argued was impossible given his injuries; a judge nonetheless ruled the blood evidence admissible. Ruggs appeared in court the next day, where a judge set bail at $150,000; he initially faced two felony counts of DUI and reckless driving causing substantial bodily harm or death, additional counts tied to Kilgo-Washington’s injuries, and a misdemeanor weapons charge after a loaded gun was found in his car.
Public Reaction and Consequences #
Reaction across the NFL was immediate: quarterback Derek Carr said Ruggs needs to be loved and that “if no one else will do it, I’ll do it,” while interim head coach Rich Bisaccia expressed the team’s “sincere condolences to the victim’s family.” Tintor was a Serbian immigrant who had graduated from a Las Vegas high school, worked at Target and was close to obtaining U.S. citizenship; her family called Max her best friend.
On May 10, 2023, Ruggs pleaded guilty to one felony count of DUI resulting in death and one misdemeanor count of vehicular manslaughter as part of a plea agreement. Prosecutors said they accepted the deal over concerns that the blood draw — “virtually” the only proof he was under the influence — could be thrown out. The agreement was favorable to Ruggs — former DUI prosecutor Thomas Moskal called three to ten years “on the low end of what we see in DUI death cases in that courthouse,” where a typical sentence has a five-year minimum.
Current Status #
At his sentencing on August 9, 2023, Ruggs apologized to Tintor’s family at the outset of the packed hearing: “To the parents and family of Ms. Tintor, I sincerely apologize for the pain and suffering my actions the morning of Nov. 2, 2021 have caused you,” adding there was “no excuse” for his actions. He said that after prison he intends to counsel others “about the dangers of driving at unsafe speed and driving and drinking.” Clark County District Court Judge Jennifer Schwartz sentenced him to three to ten years in state prison, and he was handcuffed and led away; Tintor’s mother, Mirjana Komazec, in a statement read in court, remembered “what it was like to hug and embrace her” and prayed that Ruggs would “be blessed with the opportunity to be able watch his beautiful daughter grow into the amazing woman she can be.”
Ruggs, who had remained free on house arrest since shortly after the crash, was immediately remanded into custody, eligible for parole after his third year. By 2024 he was working at the Nevada Governor’s Mansion under the state’s community trustee inmates program, and in December 2025 it was reported that he completed his University of Alabama bachelor’s degree with a 4.0 GPA while incarcerated. He has since been moved to a medium-security prison in northern Nevada, and parole was denied on June 11, 2026.
Impact on Their Career/Life #
Released the same day as the collision, Ruggs finished his Raiders career with 20 games, 1,197 all-purpose yards and four touchdowns. He went from the fastest receiver in his draft class on a guaranteed $16.67 million contract to a prison inmate serving a three-to-ten-year term for a crash that killed a 23-year-old woman and her dog. Farhan Naqvi, an attorney for Tintor’s family, said: “The sentence isn’t going to bring Tina back. What we’re hoping for, more than anything, is that other deaths can be prevented from driving under the influence and reckless driving. It ruins lives. It destroys families.”