Two years ago, Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, a Cuban immigrant, ran into a traffic jam in the US state of Colorado because his brakes gave out. Four people were killed and many others were injured. Aguilera-Mederos was 26 years old at the time.
Downhill
He said there was nothing he could have done to prevent the accident. The brakes failed on a bit downhill. But prosecutors in Colorado disagreed. They accused him of reckless behavior leading up to the accident, and making bad decisions.
Aguilera-Mederos drove a load of logs almost twice as fast as the allowed speed, so he could no longer brake. 28 cars were involved in the pile-up it caused.
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Earlier this month, the judge sentenced Aguilera-Mederos to a whopping 110 years in prison, much to the anger of many who thought the sentence was excessive. The state’s governor, Jared Polis, also joined them yesterday. He decided to reduce the sentence to ten years.
‘Excessive’
“Although you are not innocent, your sentence is excessive compared to many other inmates in our justice system who committed violent crimes intentionally and premeditated,” Polis wrote in a letter to Aguilera-Mederos.
In the past few weeks, many people stood up for the truck driver. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian also joined the protests.
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