Mother who killed Las Vegas student in wrong-way DUI crash heads to prison: ‘I’ll always look at myself as a monster’
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — An impaired driver who killed a UNLV student in a wrong-way crash will serve at least five years in prison, a Las Vegas judge ruled Monday.
Clark County District Court Judge Jessica Peterson sentenced Taylor Madison to a 5-to-12-and-a-half-year sentence. Madison was heading south on U.S. 95 toward Searchlight on Sept. 26, 2022, when she crashed into 18-year-old Katarina “Kat” Johnson’s car head-on.
Johnson, a freshman from Tennessee, was driving northbound on her way back from meeting friends for a bonfire, which ended up canceled.
Earlier this year, Madison agreed to plead guilty to one charge of DUI resulting in death, documents said. As part of the deal, Peterson could have sentenced Madison to anywhere between two to 20 years in prison.
“There’s no excuse,” Madison, a mother of a 4-year-old child, said in court before Peterson sentenced her. “I’ll always look at myself as a monster and the survivor’s guilt that I have will forever carry with me.”
Johnsons family told the court about the last time they saw her.
“I would have hugged her longer,” Alexaundra Johnson, Katarina’s mother, said. “I would have breathed in her scent longer and I would have given her another kiss.”
As the 8 News Now Investigators first reported last year, the stretch of highway where Johnson was killed is not patrolled 24/7. The crash happened at 12:33 a.m. on a section of road in the jurisdiction of Nevada State Police but records the 8 News Now Investigators obtained show Boulder City police arrived first at 12:41 a.m. The city’s fire department reached the crash site two minutes later at 12:43 a.m. The first state trooper arrived at 1:14 a.m. – nearly 45 minutes after impact.
“You gave my daughter a life sentence,” Alexaundra Johnson said to Madison. “You gave my family a life sentence and all her friends who were there that night a life sentence of heartache, grief and pain.”
The Johnsons asked Peterson to sentence Madison to the maximum penalty. Peterson said she weighed both their victim and the defendant in making her decision, adding Madison chose to ingest alcohol and drugs but did not intend to kill someone.
“I don’t want to see someone else’s life get ruined,” Alexaundra Johnson said.
Madison told the court she hoped to become a spokesperson for people who do not think a similar crime could happen to them.
Last year, a judge in Boulder City heard arguments from prosecutors over allegations Madison tampered with her alcohol-monitoring bracelet. The judge determined Madison’s sock could have been to blame.
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