Prosecutors say Jose Gutierrez accelerated past 100 mph and drove straight into stopped vehicles, killing three people in a 12-car collision.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — A Clark County judge has refused to dismiss murder charges against a 19-year-old man accused of causing a 12-car crash at more than 100 mph that killed three people, including his pregnant girlfriend, at a busy Las Vegas intersection in November.
Wednesday’s ruling keeps Jose Gutierrez jailed without bail and moves one of the valley’s most closely watched traffic death cases deeper into the criminal process. Prosecutors say the crash was not a moment of reckless speeding but an intentional act aimed at a line of cars stopped at a red light. Defense lawyer Thomas Moskal has argued the state has not shown willfulness, deliberation or premeditation, saying speed and the lack of braking do not by themselves prove murder. District Judge Michelle Leavitt rejected that argument, leaving the most serious charges in place.
The crash happened just before 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 18, 2025, on West Cheyenne Avenue near North Jones Boulevard in northwest Las Vegas. Police said Gutierrez was driving a silver 2011 Infiniti G37 eastbound when he accelerated for nearly a mile, reached more than 100 mph in a 45 mph zone and slammed into vehicles stopped at a red signal. Investigators have said there was no sign he braked or swerved before impact. The chain reaction involved 12 vehicles and turned a broad suburban intersection into a debris field of crushed metal, shattered glass and disabled cars. Edward Garcia, 38, died at the scene. Adilene Duran Rincon, 20, who was riding in the Infiniti and was pregnant, also was killed. Vanessa Vasquez, 25, suffered critical injuries and died weeks later. Prosecutors told the court the evidence allows a jury to infer intent from the way the car was driven. One witness, Assaf Cohen, said the driver went straight into the waiting cars without any visible effort to avoid them.
Gutierrez now faces murder with a deadly weapon, reckless driving resulting in death, attempted murder with a deadly weapon and battery counts tied to the pileup and the people hurt in it. At earlier hearings, prosecutors said witness testimony, telematics data and video support their claim that the crash was deliberate. Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Nicholas Portz argued that the straight-line approach matters because drivers in ordinary crashes usually brake, turn or try to escape impact. He said Gutierrez did none of that. Prosecutors also said testing found no alcohol or drugs in Gutierrez’s system, cutting against an explanation based on intoxication. The state has framed the vehicle itself as the deadly weapon and said its theory does not depend on proving a personal dispute with every victim in the line of traffic. The defense has pushed back by saying the state has not shown a motive and has not produced direct proof that Gutierrez intended to kill anyone. In court filings, Moskal called the state’s theory speculative and said the evidence, even if severe, describes reckless driving rather than first-degree murder. A separate report in local coverage said the defense also raised seizure and concussion issues earlier in the case, though prosecutors have continued to insist the available evidence points to an intentional act.
The case has drawn broad public attention in part because of who died and because of what prosecutors say happened in the seconds before impact. Rincon was Gutierrez’s girlfriend and was pregnant when she was killed in the passenger seat. Garcia and Vasquez were in other vehicles stopped lawfully at the red light when the Infiniti struck the line. Vasquez survived the initial wreck but later died from her injuries, turning what began as a two-fatality case into a triple-fatality prosecution. Police said the crash added to Las Vegas’ traffic death toll late in the year and forced closures around a major valley corridor while emergency crews treated the injured and cleared the scene. The investigation has also pulled in the defendant’s recent history. Court records cited in local reports say Gutierrez had been ticketed for speeding in October after police caught him driving 52 mph in a 35 mph zone. Records also show he was arrested in April in an unrelated incident in which he was accused of threatening a police officer who had responded to a call involving a woman who said Gutierrez hit her. Those records are not the basis for the current murder counts, but they have become part of the public picture around the case as prosecutors and defense lawyers argue over his state of mind and past conduct.
The legal stakes remain high. Gutierrez has been held without bail since shortly after the crash, and prosecutors have already persuaded one judge that the evidence was strong enough to move the case forward after a preliminary hearing. Leavitt’s latest ruling means the prosecution will continue toward trial or another major pretrial stage with the murder counts intact. Local reporting in December said prosecutors were also reviewing whether to seek the death penalty, though no final decision on that issue was announced in the dismissal ruling. What comes next is likely to center on motions, evidence fights and expert analysis of video, speed data and injury patterns. The defense can still challenge how the jury should view intent, and prosecutors will still have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this was more than a catastrophic traffic crime. That question sits at the center of the case: whether jurors will see a young driver committing an extreme act of recklessness or a man who deliberately used a car to kill. Gutierrez’s next court appearance was set for March 4, a date expected to shape the timetable for the next round of proceedings.
The courtroom debate has been marked by blunt language from both sides and by testimony that tried to capture the violence of the crash in human terms. Portz told the judge that intent can be inferred from conduct and said driving straight into stopped cars at full speed showed more than carelessness. Moskal answered that the state was asking the court to leap from bad driving to murder without the kind of direct evidence, motive or statement that often appears in intentional killing cases. Witnesses who survived or saw the collision have supplied some of the most striking descriptions. Cohen testified at an earlier hearing that in his view the driver behaved unlike someone caught in a last-second mistake. He said he had seen crashes before and expected a driver to swerve or brake, but said that did not happen here. Other victims and family members have had to recount serious injuries, sudden loss and long hospital stays as the case moved through court. Their accounts have helped explain why the case has resonated beyond the legal question of charging standards. It is about three dead people, multiple injured survivors and an intersection where an ordinary stop at a red light ended in a mass-casualty collision.
For now, the charges stand, Gutierrez remains in custody and the case continues toward its next hearing. The next milestone is the March 4 court date, when lawyers are expected to address the path forward in the prosecution.