Millions of truckers and citizens have signed the petition demanding clemency for a truck driver who was sentenced to 110 years in prison after the 18-wheeler he was driving lost its brakes, causing him to crash and kill four people on a Colorado interstate.
There are now more than 4.4 million signatures on the petition that is calling for Governor Jared Polis to reduce the suspect's sentence. Various social media users have contacted truckers to boycott Colorado in protest of the alleged injustice and mistaken sentencing.
Request for Clemency
The suspect, identified as 26-year-old Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, was a former truck driver who was the driver of the vehicle when it crashed. Authorities held the suspect in Denver on Monday and despite the massive online support that he received, only eight people attended the demonstration.
"Our goal is to bring local and national awareness so that we CAN find someone who will support Rogel in creating change in this sentencing. Let's join together and RISE UP in support for Rogel! Let Governor Polis know the TIME doesn't fit the 'Crime'. If we do not stand up for him, who will?" said protest organizers, Dailymail reported.
A spokesperson for the Change.org website said that the petition has become the fastest-growing one in the whole year. Attorney Bryan Kuhn said that there did not seem to be an intention to injure or kill people in Rogel's case. He argued that the suspect was getting a sentence that could rival a mass murderer.
Earlier this month, authorities convicted the 26-year-old suspect of vehicular homicide and other charges. Rogel testified that, when the incident occurred, he tried to slam on the brakes of the 18-wheeler to prevent the vehicle from crashing on Apr. 25, 2019; but according to him, he failed.
Prosecutors focused on the suspect's decision not to take any runaway truck ramps while the massive vehicle went about 85 miles per hour on Interstate 70 west of Denver. The crash resulted in a chain reaction that wrecked gas tanks that later burst into flames, consuming several vehicles and melting a portion of the highway, Fox News reported.
Horrifying Accident
People immediately criticized the decision of the case to hand out a lengthy sentence to Rogel, including the judge who was preceding his trial. Allegedly, the judge said that if he had the discretion, he would not be given that long of a sentence.
The company that the suspect was driving for identified in local news reports as Castellano 03 Trucking LLC in Houston did not respond to requests for comments regarding the case.
In a statement, a popular website about cars, Jalopnik, said that the sentencing of an employee to a lifetime-and-a-half behind bars due to equipment failure was wrong. A lawyer for the suspect, James Colgan, said that he has been in the system for more than three decades and has never seen anything like what happened to Rogel.
"I think the chances are pretty good that the governor is going to look at that favorably. This is truly, truly, truly something that is out of the ordinary," said Colgan, the New York Times reported.
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