An accused drunken driver plunged down an embankment after leaving a family Christmas celebration in 2022, killing his 23-year-old passenger, Ventura County prosecutors said.

Now, more than two years later, Michael Gordon Butler, 40, has been sentenced to four years in state prison in the death of Coldren James Lee Udell Kiblinger, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office said in a May 23 news release.

An attorney for Butler did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment Tuesday.

“This was a preventable tragedy,” Deputy District Attorney Jillian Ewan said in the release. “Coldren Kiblinger’s life was tragically cut down by Butler’s grossly negligent decisions on December 25, 2022.”

California Highway Patrol officers got a 911 call the evening of Dec. 25, 2022, about a Corvette that had plunged “200 feet down an embankment” after leaving the Simi Valley roadway, prosecutors said.

Butler left a family Christmas celebration about 6 p.m. in his recently purchased car with Kiblinger seated in the passenger seat, prosecutors said.

When the two didn’t return, the family became worried and “used location- tracking apps” to look for them, prosecutors said.

Family members found the crash site and called 911, prosecutors said.

CHP investigators determined that at the time of the crash “Butler had been driving at a high rate of speed while impaired, lost control of the vehicle, and struck trees and the hillside,” killing Kiblinger, prosecutor said.

Loved ones remembered Kiblinger as “a genius” who “enjoyed working on cars, dancing, rapping, building random things around the house, hanging with friends, going to the beach with your dog star, you loved art, watching the sunset and the sunrise,” his obituary says.

Kiblinger turned 23 just four days before he died, according to his obituary.

He had planned to propose to his girlfriend in the coming year, the Ventura Police Department said in a May 2024 news release announcing a DUI checkpoint dedicated to Kiblinger.

“You left in the most gut-wrenching way and will forever live in our hearts and our minds always and forever,” his obituary says. “You were an angel on this earth long before you became one in heaven.”

In April 2024, Kiblinger’s mother, Loren Kiblinger, spoke in court about a potential four-year prison sentence for Butler, a close family friend at the time of the crash, saying it “does not, and will never equate, to the lifetime Cole will be missed and the lifetime that Cole will now be missing,” the Simi Valley Acorn reported.

Kiblinger’s younger brother also spoke in court, according to the newspaper.

“We are taught from a very young age the dangers of getting into the car while impaired,” Kaden Kiblinger reportedly said. “This is no accident.”

A year later, Butler pleaded guilty “to one felony count of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated,” prosecutors said.

He also admitted to special allegations of a serious felony and that “the crime involved great violence,” according to prosecutors.

“While no amount of time will bring Coldren back, I hope the guilty plea will give some sense of justice and closure for the hardship Coldren’s family and friends have endured,” Ewan said.

Simi Valley is about a 40-mile drive northwest from Los Angeles.