Trial starts for I-70 truck driver who caused deadly 28-vehicle crash in Lakewood

Provided by Lakewood Police Department

Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos

The vehicular homicide proceedings for a Texas trucker who mislaid his brakes connected Interstate 70 portion descending from Colorado’s precocious state and caused a 28-vehicle clang that killed 4 radical volition commencement Friday, much than two-and-a-half years aft the fiery wreck.

Truck operator Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, present 25, faces 41 charges successful transportation with the incident, including some battle and vehicular homicide. He’s facing decades successful prison if convicted of each charges.

On April 25, 2019, his semitrailer afloat of lumber barreled down Interstate 70 astatine speeds topping 85 mph, swerving and forcing different vehicles disconnected the roadworthy earlier moving into standstill postulation nether a span adjacent Colorado Mills Parkway successful Lakewood.

The clang caused multiple explosions and precise aggravated fires arsenic the lumber successful Aguilera-Mederos’ rig mixed with spilled gasoline and ignited. The fires brought temperatures connected the highway’s aboveground to much than 2,500 degrees.

Four radical were killed — Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano, 24, William Bailey, 67, Doyle Harrison, 61, and Stanley Politano, 69 — and six others injured.

Survivors elaborate the fearfulness of seeing a motortruck tube into stopped traffic, the panic of burning metallic and screaming commuters. Others remembered being pulled from their cars by bully Samaritans and carried to safety.

Aguilera-Mederos, who escaped with insignificant injuries, missed aggregate runaway motortruck ramps connected his mode down the steep agelong of interstate, video taken by witnesses shows. Prosecutors said Aguilera-Mederos, who was 23 astatine the time, tried to use some the truck’s brakes and its exigency brake, with nary effect.

He steered the motortruck to the close enarthrosis and kept speeding down the interstate until a semitrailer blocked the enarthrosis ahead. It was past that Aguilera-Mederos turned his motortruck into stopped traffic, causing the catastrophic 28-vehicle pileup.

His defence attorney, James Colgan, declined to remark Wednesday. In the past, Aguilera-Mederos’ ineligible counsel has argued the clang was a tragic, unavoidable mishap caused by mechanical malfunctions.

A period aft the wreck, successful May 2019, Aguilera-Mederos offered condolences to the families of the victims successful a video connected Facebook and thanked radical who had donated wealth to his ineligible defense.

Jury enactment successful the proceedings is expected to past astir 2 days, with opening statements apt to hap Tuesday. The proceedings is scheduled to past 3 weeks.

Denver Post newsman Sam Tabachnik contributed to this report.