In case you haven’t heard about this, a 22-year-old man who was driving a semi-truck had his brakes fail while he was driving. This ultimately led to a fiery and deadly crash that killed four people.

The man, Cuban immigrant Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos was convicted and sentenced to 110 years in prison after being convicted on 27 different counts.

He didn’t mean to kill anyone so people were furious over this sentence which seemed extremely unjust.

Following the sentencing, millions of people signed a petition to have this changed.

The petition read:

We all know of the crash that happened on I-70 in Denver, Colorado. Most of us have heard facts in the case. Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 23 has nothing on his driving record, or on his criminal history. He had complied with every single request by the Jefferson County courts, and investigators on the case. Hes passed all of the drug and alcohol tests that were given including a chemical test. This accident was not intentional, nor was it a criminal act on the drivers part. No one but the trucking company he is/was employed by should be held accountable for this accident. No, we are not trying to make it seem any less of a tragic accident that it is because yes, lives were lost. We are trying to hold the person who needs to be held responsible, responsible. The trucking company has had several inspections since 2017, with several mechanical violations. There are many things Rogel could have done to avoid the courts, but he took responsibility showed up and severely apologized to the victims families. Some of the families even offered Forgiveness. Rogel is not a criminal, the company he was working for knew the federal laws that go into truck driving but they failed to follow those laws. Rogel has said several times that he wishes he had the courage to crash and take his own life that day, this tragic accident wasn’t done with Intent, it wasn’t a criminal act, it was an accident. Since he has been sentenced, i have changed this to granting Rogel clemency or commutation-as time served.

Eventually, Colorado Governor Jared Polis reduced his sentence down to 10 years.

I haven’t been able to look into the incident a ton, but I’ve glanced over it. I understand that there are differing opinions about this, but I want to try and give a balanced look at this whole incident.

From what I’ve seen, the company should be partly held responsible for the incident. I know truck brakes fail, but if there is s history of this, they need to be held responsible.

That said, I also believe that Rogel Aguilera-Mederos should be held responsible as well because from what I’ve seen, he had multiple opportunities to leave the highway via runaway truck ramps, yet he did not do so. In fact, there is video of him swerving over into the lanes to the left of him and nearly running a truck off of the road.

Again, I don’t know all of the facts, but to some degree he should be held responsible and accountable. I’m not sure if 10 years is too much or too little, but most people are happier with this reduced sentence.

I wish I could see all of the evidence, but I doubt that this is going to all be released.