Gavin Caci Sentenced to 8 to 20 Years for DUI Crash Near the Strip That Critically Injured a Mother and Her Toddler

October 16, 2026

LAS VEGAS

Gavin Caci will spend at least the next eight years in a Nevada prison for a drive measured in minutes. On Thursday, Clark County District Judge Tara Clark Newberry sentenced the 28-year-old Las Vegas nightclub promoter to eight to 20 years in state prison and ordered him to pay $16,000 in fines, closing the criminal case that began on a sidewalk just east of the Strip on the night of February 8 — Super Bowl Sunday — when his Tesla struck a British family waiting to cross the street and critically injured a mother and her 2-year-old daughter.

The sentence was handed down in a courtroom that was full, but not with strangers. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Caci's relatives and friends, including his parents and the mother of his child, filled nearly every seat in the gallery. Casino.org put the number at nearly 30 supporters, among them his parents and the mother of his 3-year-old son. The family his car hit was an ocean away. The victims, Luke and Jessica Sadler and their daughter, have since returned home to the United Kingdom, and Luke Sadler appeared remotely to read a victim impact statement on his wife's behalf.

The Night of February 8

The crash happened at about 7:35 p.m. on February 8, near Harmon Avenue and Audrie Lane, in the dense resort corridor just east of Las Vegas Boulevard. Prosecutors said Caci had taken his final drink roughly half an hour earlier at Marquee Nightclub inside The Cosmopolitan, where the Super Bowl weekend crowds were in full swing. He got behind the wheel of a 2026 Tesla Model Y anyway.

According to investigators, the Tesla rear-ended a Chevrolet Trax that was stopped at a red light, and the impact redirected the car onto the south sidewalk along Harmon. The Sadlers were standing there waiting for the signal to change, in Las Vegas for a wedding, their daughter in a stroller. The Tesla struck the family. The force of the collision threw the 2-year-old from her stroller into a streetlight pole. Mother and daughter were rushed to University Medical Center with life-threatening injuries and spent weeks in intensive care. Luke Sadler's injuries were minor by comparison — a word that, in a case like this, only describes the physical side of it.

Caci did not stop. Investigators said he kept driving for several minutes on a shredded front tire before pulling into the Topgolf parking lot on Koval Lane, where a witness who had followed him alerted police. He was the only person involved in the crash who was not hurt. A blood test drawn less than two hours after the collision measured his blood-alcohol concentration at 0.22 — nearly triple Nevada's legal limit of 0.08. The Tesla's own onboard cameras, investigators said, had recorded the moments leading up to the crash.

From Not Guilty to Guilty

Caci initially pleaded not guilty, and the case ground forward through the spring and summer in the same downtown courthouse complex where, this week, a very different Clark County trial has been playing out. In August, he changed course and pleaded guilty to multiple felonies: driving under the influence resulting in substantial bodily harm, reckless driving, and leaving the scene of an accident involving injury. The plea took a trial off the table and left the length of his punishment to Judge Newberry.

Thursday in the Courtroom

The two sides came to sentencing far apart. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of 32 to 80 years, pointing to the severity of the injuries and to Caci's driving record, which Casino.org reported includes earlier speeding citations and a 2019 DUI arrest that did not result in a conviction. His defense attorney, Paola Armeni, asked for leniency, arguing the crash came from catastrophic judgment rather than malice.

Caci addressed the court himself. He told the judge he had been sober for 245 days, and he spoke about the death of his older brother, a grief he said had fueled his heavy drinking. "I'm not offering excuses," he said, in Casino.org's account of the hearing, adding that he was trying to become someone who never repeats the harm he caused.

Then the judge spoke. Newberry told Caci the crash was the predictable outcome of preventable choices — that nothing about that night required him to drive. "There were so many opportunities to prevent this," she said, noting he could have called a rideshare service, a taxi or a friend instead of getting behind the wheel. The sentence she imposed — eight to 20 years, plus the fines — sat well below what prosecutors had sought and far above what the defense had hoped for. With a minimum term of eight years, Caci will be at least 36 years old before it expires.

The criminal case is now closed, but the crash is not finished following anyone involved. The Sadler family has filed a civil lawsuit against Caci and Tesla Lease Trust alleging negligent entrustment, and the family's recovery continues at home in the UK. What Thursday settled was narrower: how long the man who chose to drive that night will spend in prison for it.