The heartbroken family of Las Vegas crash victim Tina Tintor have told DailyMail.com how they survived war in their native Croatia and came to the US as refugees - only for her to die when Las Vegas Raiders star Henry Ruggs III slammed into her car at 156mph.
Tina, 23, and her golden retriever Max burned alive in the early hours of Tuesday morning after a black corvette driven by Ruggs hit her Toyota RAV4 SUV.
Ruggs, 22, was double the legal alcohol limit when he hit insurance company worker Tina at 3.40am – sending her SUV spinning and leaving her trapped in the car and screaming in the seconds before it exploded.
A witness whose home overlooks the crash site told DailyMail.com she heard a loud bang and then saw the Toyota explode - with the flames 'reaching as high as the palm trees'.
She added: 'He [Ruggs] was using very bad language – he kept saying 'f***, f***, f***'.
Tintor's family have now spoken for the first time, with brother Djordje, 25, telling DailyMail.com that Tina spent her final evening with a friend before taking Max for a walk in a local dog park. He said she was on her way home when the crash happened.
Tina Tintor, 23, and her golden retriever Max burned alive Tuesday morning after Las Vegas Raiders star Henry Ruggs III slammed into her car
Cops said Ruggs was driving his Corvette at 156mph before colliding with the victim's Toyota RAV4 at 127mph at 3:40am on Tuesday in Las Vegas. The Toyota burst into flames and the driver and her dog died
Tintor's family have now spoken for the first time, with her brother Djordje, 25, telling DailyMail.com that Tina spent her final evening with a friend. Her uncle Predrag Komazec, 37, told DailyMail.com how the family had survived being bombed during the Yugoslavian War and are originally from Croatia
Djordje said: 'Her and her friend went to the park over by my grandma's house on Rainbow and Valley Springs – they have a little community park there.
'Her friend lives across the street from my grandma. They were hanging there until around 12 and then they went across the street, she dropped her friend off and then went out to the park.
'She was on the way home.'
Henry Ruggs III's blood-alcohol level was twice Nevada 's legal limit and he was traveling at 156mph in the moments leading up to the car crash
Tina, who worked from home fielding calls for an insurance company, had dreamed of building a career computer science, her family said.
A Serbian refugee, she arrived in the US in 2001 as a three-year-old toddler, along with her brother and mother Biljana, 49, and was on the verge of gaining US citizenship.
Her uncle Predrag Komazec, 37, told DailyMail.com how the family had survived
