Wrong-way drunk driver gets life sentence
The Reno man responsible for the death of 24-year-old Carson City resident Brian A. Vazquez-Gonzalez was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of vehicular homicide.
District Judge Tom Gregory said Stephen Michael Pawlowski, 65, earned the maximum sentence after having ignored every warning about his drinking.
“This did not have to happen,” Gregory said of the March 20, 2025, head-on collision that claimed Vazquez-Gonzalez’s life and injured his significant other and their daughter on the day before her third birthday. “You participated in the victim impact panels and felt and heard and saw the impact of drinking and driving.”
Six members of the Vazquez-Gonzalez family provided victim impact statements in person and one statement was read by prosecutor Chelsea Mazza.
“We are sentenced to a life without him,” said partner Karla Rea, who was behind the wheel of a Subaru that Pawlowski hit head-on as he was driving the wrong way on Highway 50 with a .192 blood alcohol content. “You took my partner, my soulmate, the father of my children, the person I planned to grow old with,” Rea said. “I will never forgive you.”
She received a head injury in the collision while her daughter had a broken leg.
“I have to remind myself that it’s not my fault,” she testified. “We have to live with the consequences of this every single day.”
Vazquez-Gonzalez’s father and mother testified that they learned of his death when their phones issued an accident alert.
His father and brother were also heading to South Lake Tahoe for work.
Vazquez-Gonzalez told his dad he would ride with Rea.
While the two men were en route, they received an alert on their phone and made their way to the scene of the Glenbrook collision.
They testified that they saw Vazquez-Gonzalez sitting in the passenger’s side of the vehicle. Unsure of his condition, his father walked up and tried to talk to him, but he didn’t answer.
A firefighter told them at the scene that Vazquez-Gonzalez didn’t survive the crash.
“If I had known then what I learned later, you wouldn’t be sitting there, it would be me,” the father said. “You will see me in your dreams.”
His mother said she was stuck at home with a broken ankle when she received the alert and called to find out what happened, but no one answered.
Nearly three dozen friends and relatives attended Tuesday’s sentencing hearing, many wearing T-shirts with Vazquez-Gonzalez’s photo and an airplane.
His father said that Vazquez-Gonzalez was an airplane mechanic who worked hard to complete school.
The child’s grandmother says every time the little girl sees an airplane she says her dad’s onboard.
Attorney Alexis Dyer confirmed that on Monday, Pawlowski had been sentenced to six months for the DUI he was arrested on 13 days before the fatal collision. He also received 25 days for contempt.
On Tuesday, Gregory sentenced Pawlowski to 10 years to life for felony vehicular homicide, 8-20 years for driving under the influence causing substantial bodily harm or death and 4-10 years for reckless driving causing injury. In addition, he must pay $10,000 in fines and $1.3 million in restitution.
Most of that will come from the $1 million cash bail his brother posted to get him out of jail last summer. Pawlowski wasn’t free for long because he was tested positive for alcohol and was taken back into custody.
Under the sentence, Pawlowski received a minimum of 22 years in prison. Because state law segregates DUI drivers from violent offenders, most of that won’t be in a cell, Mazza said.
“Money does not take away the harm,” Dyer said during her argument seeking a lesser sentence. She told the judge that Pawlowski suffered from mental health and substance abuse issues.
She said she’d advised him not to express remorse until the sentencing hearing.
“He will be in custody well into his 70s just on the first count and other supervision for the rest of his life,” she said.
“I want to express to the court and family how sorry I am,” he said. “It’s all on me. That doesn’t do anything to replace a father.”
Mazza said Pawlowski’s Monday sentencing meant he had committed five instances of driving under the influence before the 2025 collision.
Pawlowski was arrested with a .183 blood alcohol content on March 7, 2025, by University of Nevada, Reno, police.
He was released on supervision by Washoe County courts with orders not to drink alcohol, but on the three days prior to the collision he violated those conditions. He tested positive on March 17 and 18. On March 19, he began a bender that only ended when he killed Vazquez-Gonzalez, injured Rea and their daughter.
Mazza said on two occasions that day Pawlowski was warned that he was drunk, including by a state highway worker who saw him parked by the side of the road and the bartender of the Stateline establishment where he ordered a beer and a shot of tequila to wash down the sliders that morning before nodding off.
“He was willing to spend $1 million for brief freedom, but not a small amount of money for transportation home,” Rea said.
She testified that she learned she was pregnant with a second child while she was in the hospital being treated for a brain bleed. The child, a healthy boy, was born in November 2025.
Rea said her son looks like his dad.
