Adarius Hayes: A Recruit’s Vehicular Homicide Charges

The Incident

Adarius Hayes was a four-star linebacker recruit out of Largo High School who chose the University of Miami over Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Notre Dame, and Ohio State, and played 12 games as a true freshman in 2024. He also had a documented history of traffic citations before the crash at the center of this case: a brief license suspension in 2023 after failing to complete a required driving course, and a September 2024 citation in Miami-Dade County for racing another vehicle at speeds over 90 mph on U.S. 1. Prosecutors dropped that racing case in February 2025; about a month later, in March 2025, Hayes received two additional speeding tickets.

On May 10, 2025, at approximately 1:43 p.m., Hayes was driving a 2024 Dodge Durango in Largo, Florida, with a 19-year-old passenger in front and a 16-year-old passenger in back. According to a Largo Police Department investigation that later drew on a search warrant executed on the vehicle’s data, Hayes was traveling 70.8 mph five seconds before impact and reached 78.9 mph, nearly double the posted 40 mph limit, at the moment of the crash. Police say he crossed three lanes of traffic without signaling, briefly returned to the curb lane, and then crossed all three lanes again seconds later, striking a 2017 Kia Soul that was lawfully executing a left turn onto Orange View Drive.

The Kia was driven by 78-year-old Gail Price, with her partner Herbert Riveria, 58, in the front passenger seat and Riveria’s two sons, 10-year-old Jabari Elijah Solomon and 4-year-old Charlie Herbert Solomon Riveria, in the back. The family was reportedly returning home after picking up a birthday cake for Jabari’s tenth birthday. The two boys were ejected from the vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene; Price was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries and died the following day. Herbert Riveria survived with serious injuries, including a punctured lung and a cracked sternum that required surgery. Hayes and one of his passengers were treated for non-life-threatening injuries and released. Investigators found no indication that alcohol or drugs played a role in the crash.

The Charges and What Happened in Court

The Largo Police Department’s Traffic Safety Unit worked with the State Attorney’s Office on a months-long investigation before securing an arrest warrant. On August 29, 2025, two days before Miami’s season opener against Notre Dame, Hayes turned himself in, was booked into the Pinellas County Jail, and was released the same day on a $350,000 bond. The University of Miami suspended him indefinitely from all athletic activity.

Hayes is currently charged with three counts of vehicular homicide, second-degree felonies under Florida law, and two counts of reckless driving with serious bodily injury. His case has continued through pretrial proceedings, and as of the most recent scheduling, trial remains set for the week of October 5, 2026. Prosecutors have told the court they intend to call Largo police officers, the medical examiner, treating physicians, and video custodians, and that Hayes’s sentencing guidelines score to roughly 30 years at the low end, with a life sentence within the range the court could legally impose depending on the final scoresheet calculation.

The Texas Analysis

This is not an intoxication case; investigators found no evidence of alcohol or drugs. That single fact changes the Texas analysis substantially, not on the underlying felony grading, which is comparable, but on the sentencing structure, where Texas’s rules would likely cap Hayes’s realistic exposure well below what Florida’s scoresheet system allows for the same conduct.

Manslaughter: Texas Penal Code §19.04

Absent intoxication, a death caused by extreme, aggressive driving maps in Texas to manslaughter rather than intoxication manslaughter. Manslaughter requires that the person recklessly cause the death of an individual; under Texas Penal Code §6.03(c), recklessness means consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk, a gross deviation from how an ordinary person would act in the circumstances. Nearly doubling the speed limit, crossing three lanes without signaling twice within seconds, and doing so with a documented prior racing citation on the same driver’s record would be the kind of fact pattern a Texas prosecutor would use to argue conscious disregard rather than mere carelessness. Manslaughter is a second-degree felony, 2 to 20 years in TDCJ and a fine up to $10,000; with three deaths, Texas would support three separate counts, one per victim.

The lesser alternative is criminally negligent homicide under §19.05, a state jail felony carrying 180 days to 2 years, which applies where the person should have been aware of the risk but did not consciously disregard it. The gap between these two charges, a second-degree felony and a state jail felony, is enormous, and which one applies depends entirely on what the evidence shows about Hayes’s state of mind in the seconds before the crash.

Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon: Texas Penal Code §22.02

Herbert Riveria’s injuries could support a separate aggravated assault charge. Texas courts have long held that a vehicle, driven in a manner capable of causing death or serious bodily injury, qualifies as a deadly weapon for purposes of this statute. A second-degree felony, 2 to 20 years, would apply absent an aggravating factor (such as the victim being a family member or public servant) that would elevate it further; none appears to apply here.

The Prior Racing Citation: Texas Transportation Code §545.420

The September 2024 citation for racing at over 90 mph on U.S. 1, standing alone, would be a Class B misdemeanor in Texas under §545.420 for a first offense (up to 180 days in county jail and a $2,000 fine), with mandatory impoundment of the vehicle. It does not itself apply to the May 2025 crash, since there is no allegation Hayes was racing another vehicle that day. Its relevance is different: a documented prior instance of the same extreme-speed conduct is the kind of evidence a Texas prosecutor would seek to admit under Texas Rule of Evidence 404(b) to show Hayes’s awareness of the risks of high-speed driving, not to prove he has a bad character generally. Whether that evidence comes in, and for what limited purpose the jury is instructed to use it, would be heavily litigated.

Why Texas’s Sentencing Structure Would Look Different

Under Texas Penal Code §3.03(a), when a defendant is convicted of multiple offenses arising from the same criminal episode and prosecuted together, the sentences run concurrently by default. Section 3.03(b) lists specific, narrow exceptions where a court may instead stack sentences consecutively, and that list includes intoxication assault and intoxication manslaughter under §§49.07 and 49.08, plus certain sex offenses against minors. Ordinary manslaughter under §19.04 and aggravated assault under §22.02 are not on that list.

Because there is no allegation of intoxication here, Hayes’s three manslaughter counts and any aggravated assault count would fall outside the stacking exception. Prosecuted together in a single Texas criminal action, as this case would almost certainly be, the sentences would presumptively run concurrently, meaning Hayes’s practical maximum exposure would be capped at the single highest sentence imposed, up to 20 years on the top count, rather than the cumulative total that Florida’s guidelines scoresheet is currently producing, which prosecutors have told the Florida court could reach a life sentence. The State could attempt to sever the counts into separate trials to escape the concurrent-sentencing rule, but severance under Texas Penal Code §3.04 carries its own complications and is not automatic. This is the rare entry in this series where Texas’s structural rules would likely work in the defendant’s favor relative to another state, even though the underlying felony grading is comparable.

How Would the Defense Approach This in Texas?

• Fight for negligence, not recklessness. The difference between manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide is the difference between a second-degree felony and a state jail felony. A Texas defense team would build the record for the lower culpable mental state at every stage, from the initial charging decision through jury instructions at trial.
• Resist severance. Because concurrent sentencing under §3.03(a) depends on the counts being prosecuted together, the defense has a direct interest in opposing any effort to split the charges into separate proceedings.
• Limit the racing citation to its proper purpose. A defense team would seek a limiting instruction, or exclusion altogether, of the September 2024 racing citation, arguing that a single, previously dismissed citation eight months earlier risks being used by the jury as forbidden propensity evidence rather than the narrow state-of-mind purpose the rules allow.
• Develop the causation record. Manslaughter still requires the State to prove that the reckless conduct, not some independent factor, caused the deaths. The defense would examine sightlines, signal timing, and the Kia’s own speed and position at the intersection as part of that analysis.
• Build the punishment-phase record early. Hayes’s age at the time, the absence of any prior criminal conviction, and his voluntary surrender are the kind of mitigation evidence that matters most once culpability, if any, is established, particularly in a case defined by recklessness rather than intent to harm.

What This Case Illustrates

Most entries in this series show Texas exposure exceeding what a defendant actually faced elsewhere. This one runs the other way on sentencing structure, even though the underlying charges are comparable: Texas reserves its consecutive-sentencing authority for a short, specific list of offenses, intoxication manslaughter chief among them, and ordinary reckless-driving homicide is not on that list. A driver who kills multiple people while sober faces a meaningfully different sentencing ceiling in Texas than one who does so while intoxicated, a distinction that says as much about how the Legislature has chosen to punish drunk driving specifically as it does about the underlying tragedy. The case also shows how a driving record accumulates before it ever produces a headline: a license suspension, a dismissed racing citation, additional speeding tickets, each one a data point that becomes evidence only after something goes catastrophically wrong.

Related Reading on Deandra Grant Law

• Manslaughter Defense in Texas. How Texas distinguishes manslaughter from criminally negligent homicide in fatal crash cases.
• Aggravated Assault Defense in Texas. When a vehicle counts as a deadly weapon under Texas law.
• Intoxication Manslaughter in Texas. Why Texas allows stacked sentences for DWI-related deaths but not most other homicide charges.

Sources

• ESPN, NBC News, CBS News, CBS Sports, Fox Sports: Original charging coverage, August 29, 2025
• FOX 13 Tampa Bay / FOX 35 Orlando: Reporting on the September 2024 racing citation
• WFLA: June 2026 pretrial coverage and October 2026 trial date: wfla.com
• The Miami Hurricane / WLRN: Hayes’s driving record and team suspension
• Yahoo News / Tampa Bay Times: Victim identification and family details
• Texas Penal Code §§3.03, 3.04, 6.03, 19.04, 19.05, 22.02: statutes.capitol.texas.gov
• Texas Transportation Code §545.420: statutes.capitol.texas.gov

The Defense File is an educational series. All Texas analysis is hypothetical and does not constitute legal advice about any specific case. Adarius Hayes has pleaded not guilty, his case is set for trial in October 2026, and he is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

If you or a family member is facing charges in Texas, call (214) 225-7117 for a free, confidential case review. Or schedule online at texasdwisite.com.