Prosecutor seeks reduced sentence for truck driver who got 110 years for fatal crash

ByDEENA ZARU ABCNews logo
Monday, December 27, 2021

Prosecutors filed a motion earlier this month asking for a reduced sentence for Rogel Aguilera Mederos, the truck driver who was sentenced to 110 years in prison for a 2019 fatal crash on I-70 outside Denver that killed four people and injured several others.



District Attorney Alexis King is set to ask the court to reconsider Mederos' original sentence and suggest a range of 20-30 years behind bars instead.



"As the jury found, Mr. Aguilera-Mederos knowingly made multiple active choices that resulted in the death of four people, serious injuries to others, and mass destruction," King said in a statement obtained by ABC News. "This sentencing range reflects an appropriate outcome for that conduct, which was not an accident."



The motion to reconsider the sentence comes after the case garnered national attention. A Change.org petition advocated for a commutation for Mederos, saying the crash was "not intentional." Nearly 5 million people have signed the online petition.



Mederos' attorney James Colgan told ABC News in a phone interview Monday that efforts to reconsider the sentence are "disingenuous."



"I find it interesting that two weeks ago they were fine with 110 years and only now that public outcry has blown in their face do they not want 110 years," Colgan said. "It's just politics."



Mederos was charged with 42 counts -- the most serious of which was first-degree assault, a class-three felony, and was found guilty by a Jefferson County jury of 27 counts.



Police said Mederos was driving at least 85 miles an hour before the crash on a stretch of the highway with a 45 mph speed limit for commercial vehicles.



After his brakes failed, Mederos drove past a runaway truck ramp and crashed into stopped traffic, police said.



A runaway truck ramp is essentially an escape lane or exit that allows a vehicle that is experiencing brake problems to stop safely.



Prosecutors argued that Mederos intentionally passed the ramp -- one of the reasons that some crash victims and families of those who died argued Mederos should serve time in prison.



Colgan told ABC News that Mederos' defense team "never agreed with prosecutors that he intentionally avoided the ramp" during the trial.



"By the time he realized it was there, he was past it," Colgan said, adding that Mederos was "under a lot of stress" as he attempted to get his truck into gear to attempt to brake.



Mederos, who was not intoxicated at the time, testified that after his brakes failed, he crashed into vehicles that had stopped on the highway due to backed up traffic.



Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is considering an application of clemency for Mederos that asks for a commutation.

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