“To be going that fast on the highway, that’s beyond the realm of acceptable,” a state trooper said.
INDIANAPOLIS — In a town known as the Racing Capital of the World, it’s commonplace to see speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
But Indiana State Police say they were caught off guard to discover a car racing that fast on the city’s busiest highway.
“It’s not something you see every day, let alone a Lamborghini,” said State Trooper Brandon Fletcher. “To be going that fast on the highway, that’s beyond the realm of acceptable.”
The high-speed drive along Interstate 465 made headlines when the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office announced criminal charges against Gabriel Sleiman in January 2021.
But until now, the actual evidence that investigators collected – including video showing Sleiman driving his Lamborghini at nearly four times the legal speed limit – have remained out of public view. That evidence, obtained by 13News, shows a young man seeking thrills and attention while placing himself and other motorists at risk of serious injury or death.
Captured on video
In November 2020, 13News learned of a 108-second video uploaded to YouTube. The video, which includes footage from inside the Lamborghini Huracan and from two different positions along I-465, allegedly shows the sports car traveling from 0 to 213 mph.
The drive begins with the Lamborghini stopped along the shoulder of I-465 near the Indianapolis International Airport at mile marker 9.1. The driver then pulls out onto the far left passing lane of the highway and stops again before quickly accelerating northbound.
Over the next 17 seconds, the highly edited video cuts back and forth between a front-facing camera showing the highway ahead and a dashboard camera showing the speedometer as it increases from 90 to 168 mph. A clock on the dashboard reads 2:52 a.m..
Moments later, dashboard video shows the sports car traveling 182 mph before it passes another vehicle several feet away. The Lamborghini then appears to pass a semi as the dashcam reveals a speedometer reading of 198 mph.
As the video comes to a conclusion, a camera positioned on an overpass shows the speeding car race past a third vehicle at 210 mph before cutting to dashboard video that reads 213 mph.
The driver’s face is not visible and the license plate was intentionally obscured in the video, which was posted to YouTube on November 18, 2020 by Bryce Thompson Media.
When 13News contacted Indiana State Police for comment about the video, a department spokesman said ISP troopers had not seen it. A day later, ISP assigned Fletcher to investigate. He began by downloading the video, which disappeared from YouTube a short time later.
Collecting the evidence
The online video provided ISP with a key piece of evidence it would need to pursue charges against the driver.
“If there’s a crime and it’s recorded, that’s huge,” Fletcher told 13News. “The video was extremely important.”
He got additional help from the department’s crash reconstruction team, which analyzed the video…
Read More: 213 on 465: How ISP tracked down an interstate speeder