COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Backlash continues to mount over the 110-year sentence given this week to the 26-year-old truck driver who was convicted for killing four people in a crash on Interstate 70 in 2019.
More than 3.2 million people have signed a petition as Friday afternoon calling for Gov. Jared Polis to grant clemency or commute the sentence handed down to Rogel Aguilera-Mederos on Monday.
Aguilera-Mederos was traveling 85 miles per hour when the wreck occurred in a section of Interstate 70 in Lakewood where commercial vehicles are limited to 45 miles per hour because of the road's steep grade.
The crash tore into heavy traffic and erupted in a blaze. The wreck involved 28 vehicles.
In tearful testimony he gave in his own defense at trial, Aguilera-Mederos said when his emergency brake didn't work, he planned to stay on the shoulder to avoid traffic, but another semi truck stood in the way.
"At the moment of the impact, I closed my eyes and I held the wheel," he said in Spanish.
He was convicted of 27 counts, including vehicular homicide, assault and attempted assault. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws that require the sentences to run consecutively, rather than at the same time, contributed to the lengthy penalty.
During Monday's hearing, the judge openly expressed his reluctance at imposing the sentence.
“I will state that if I had the discretion, it would not be my sentence," he said.
"When I look at my charges, we are talking about a murderer, which is not me. I have never thought about hurting anybody in my entire life," Aguilera-Mederos said during his sentencing. He asked the victims' familes for forgiveness.
The crash killed Stanley Politano, William Bailey, Doyle Harrison and Miguel Angel Lamas Arrellano.
The petition pleading for leniency reads:
"Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 23, has nothing on his driving record, or on his criminal history. He had complied with every single request by the Jefferson County courts, and investigators on the case. He's passed all of the drug and alcohol tests that were given including a chemical test. This accident was not intentional, nor was it a criminal act on the drivers part. No one but the trucking company he is/was employed by should be held accountable for this accident. No, we are not trying to make it seem any less of a tragic accident that it is because yes, lives were lost. We are trying to hold the person who needs to be held responsible, responsible."
Hashtags began gaining traction on social media platforms for people to express their anger at Aguilera-Mederos' sentence, including his name and #notruckstocolorado. Some encouraged truckers to boycott routes going through Colorado, while others compared Aguilera-Mederas to people convicted of murder who have not showed remorse for their acts, such as the gunman who pled guilty to killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
In the trial's closing arguments in October, each side painted an opposite picture of why Aguilera-Mederos' brakes failed. Deputy district attorney Kayla Wildeman said he made a series of bad decisions leading up to the crash, including speeding through several mountain towns while riding his brakes, heating them up, failing to use a runaway truck ramp several miles before the crash and recklessly swerving between the highway's lanes "into a sea of traffic."
"This is the result of the defendant doing anything but caring about others that were on the road that day," Wildeman said.
But Aguilera-Mederos' defense attorney James Colgan blamed his failed brakes on improperly maintained parts, saying the brakes were bad before he left Houston days before and Aguilera-Mederos couldn't have known they would fail.
He sought to cast doubt on prosecutors' contentions that Aguilera-Mederos acted with extreme indifference.
"Extreme indifference is something that's glaringly obvious," he said. Violent acts including the Boston Marathon bombing and the Aurora theater shooting had "agendas," but "they didn't have survivor's guilt. The defendant has survivor's guilt."
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