More than 2.1 million people have signed an online petition to have the sentence commuted to Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, the 26-year-old Cuban-born truck driver who was sentenced to 110 years in prison for causing four deaths.
Aguilera-Mederos crashed the truck he was driving on April 25, 2019 into a line of cars that was stopped on Colorado's I-70 highway, causing a mass collision and a fire that destroyed multiple vehicles.
Four Colorado citizens were killed in the accident: Doyle Harrison, 61;
William Bailey, 67;
Stanley Politano, 69;
and Miguel Lamas Arrellano, 24.
Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, in a file photo following his arrest in Lakewood, Colorado, on April 26, 2019.
In a heartbreaking interview he gave to the Telemundo station in Denver, Aguilera-Mederos assured that he would have preferred to be the one who died that day.
["I would have preferred to die," the Latino trucker who caused a fatal tragedy on the Colorado highway says from jail]
The Latino trucker has explained that he was left without brakes on a steep incline of the interstate highway heading east, when he encountered a line of cars stopped by another accident while his truck was traveling at 85 miles per hour.
When asked why he did not take a deceleration ramp on I-70 to avoid the incident, he replied:
"At that time I did not see those ramps, I did not see them, that is a difficult moment to explain
."
Aguilera-Mederos admitted that she had lied to her employer about her experience, exaggerating the years she had driven trucks and omitting important details such as that she had never driven in the mountains.
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"
God knows how I am, I would not call it repentance, I would call it that I would have preferred to die before those people
and God knows that I am telling the truth," he insisted in the interview.
In October, a jury found Aguilera-Mederos guilty of 27 counts, including four of homicide in a traffic accident, six of assault in the first degree and 10 of attempted battery in the first degree.
When he sentenced him to 110 years in prison this week, Colorado Judge A. Bruce Jones indicated that he would have preferred not to sentence him to life in prison.
However, he explained that state law required him to pass sentences consecutively.
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“It was a terrible accident, I know.
I take responsibility.
But it was not intentional
, ”the Cuban truck driver told the judge.
Among the thousands of people who have signed the petition on Change.org for the Aguilera-Mederos sentence to be modified, there are many who believe it was a human error for which the judge should have had more consideration.
"It was an accident.
Rogel is not a criminal.
He did nothing criminal.
I hope the governor will grant him clemency and release him for the time that Rogel was already incarcerated, "Armando Pérez, a truck driver of Mexican origin who resides in Denver, told the Efe news agency.
"I am going to read it and study it and I am going to prepare a proposal"
Jared Polis Governor of Colorado
Colorado Governor Jared Polis said Thursday that he will review the petition.
"I am going to read it and study it and I am going to prepare a proposal," he said in Spanish.
As a Change.org spokesperson told Telemundo Denver, the petition in favor of Aguilera-Mederos has been the most supported on its website in all of 2021.