Semi-truck driver, 23, arrested after 4 people are killed in fiery crash involving 28 vehicles on Colorado freeway
Fox News,
by
Kathleen Joyce
&
Louis Casiano
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
4/27/2019 6:22:03 AM
Police have arrested a semi-truck driver accused of causing a fiery multi-vehicle wreck Thursday on Interstate 70 near Denver, Colo., that left four people dead and six more injured. Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 23, of Texas, was arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide, police said. He is slated to appear in court on Saturday for an advisement hearing. The charges stemmed from interviews and evidence, Lakewood police spokesman Ty Countryman said. Authorities said it did not appear drugs or alcohol were involved and the crash does not appear to be intentional. Officials said they were looking into
Reply 1 - Posted by:
FleetUSA 4/27/2019 6:57:51 AM (No. 69757)
Was he a pothead?
10 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Rubinski 4/27/2019 7:03:52 AM (No. 69755)
Was he texting or on his phone?
9 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Sam1 4/27/2019 7:21:28 AM (No. 69765)
FTA: The driver," Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 23, of Texas was in the country legally and possessed a green card."
12 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
ZeldaFitzg 4/27/2019 7:53:19 AM (No. 69762)
I continue to ask: What´s with the sudden explosion of Hispanics with hyphenated surnames?
I know, I know that the addition of the mother´s surname has long been in use in Mexico, but not to this extent. It just wasn´t common previously with ordinary Hispanics in the U.S. Is this an effort to thwart identification in national databases?
20 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
zephyrgirl 4/27/2019 8:28:29 AM (No. 69750)
I-70 coming out of the mountains west of Denver is very steep and winding. Truck and car drivers with experience on this stretch downshift and keep their speeds down without using the brakes much. There are numerous warnings to truck drivers to keep their trucks in low gear as they descend. There´s even a well-marked emergency stopping lane for trucks with no brakes (which apparently this driver passed while driving out of control). I have to wonder how much English the driver could read. Either he didn´t understand the signs, or he panicked when he realized he´d overheated his brakes.
33 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
franq 4/27/2019 8:55:37 AM (No. 69773)
Our oldest son used to drive truck cross-country, so I have a soft spot in my heart for truckers. Let´s wait until all the facts come out. Maybe there was no malice involved.
8 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
planetgeo 4/27/2019 8:59:13 AM (No. 69770)
I´ve been on that highway numerous times and it is by far the scariest driving experience anywhere. The speeds and driving tactics of the majority of drivers on that road, coupled with the speeds, steepness, and curves, are insane. Throw in seasonal snow and ice and you´ve got "Deathwish Highway".
18 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
tootall 4/27/2019 10:00:10 AM (No. 69769)
Many long haul truckers are foreigners nowdays. The have temporary work permits and when those expire they are replaced with other foreign temporary drivers.
I heard this from a client whose husband works for the DOT on Kentucky
13 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Laotzu 4/27/2019 10:08:33 AM (No. 69753)
No mention of the widely reported fact he was in the breakdown lane. So strange to live in times where information contracts over time as interests manifest.
7 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
oldmagnolia 4/27/2019 10:28:31 AM (No. 69763)
#4 It is very common in Spanish speaking countries to have two last names. It could be the father and mother or both from the father.
6 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Mass Minority 4/27/2019 10:48:25 AM (No. 69772)
#5 you are well out of the mountains by the time you reach Lakewood. He was not runaway down hill at that point. So the question as to why he was travelling at such a high rate of speed remains. Look at the video in the story where the you tube guy caught him passsing in the breakdown lane, hes absolutely flying.
12 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Sam1 4/27/2019 10:51:43 AM (No. 69754)
The guy had a green card... I doubt he could read English signage or speak more than broken English. Several semi trucks in a pack once passed me on I-95 going over 100mph.. the drivers were obviously hispanic...probably had a green cards, also.
11 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
dadofboys 4/27/2019 11:08:04 AM (No. 69767)
Same thing happened here in Chattanooga. Terrible.
6 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
TXknitter 4/27/2019 11:46:00 AM (No. 69759)
Highway patrol neighbor said TX highways full of hispanic truckers with limited English and they do not understand road signage. How in the heck are they given a license then???
10 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
earlybird 4/27/2019 11:50:32 AM (No. 69761)
Mexican people usually do have two last names - the first is their father’s surname, the second is their mother’s. In Mexico there is sometimes a y between them. Here a hyphen is used.
As for this terrible wreck, the article say that the cars ahead of him were lined up, stopped because of a previous crash ahead of them. He came down a hill and plowed into them. They are investigating whether his brakes failed.
I keep my foot on the brake pedal when I stop. Otherwise it is possible for someone coming from behind to not realize my car is stopped.
All that said, this gem showed up at the end of the article:
Josh Laipply, the chief engineer with the Colorado Department of Transportation, warned drivers that they need to be more careful on the road.
"I think that we lose sight that vehicles are deadly weapons and all of us get a little careless at times and need to be more careful when we´re driving," he said.
Exactly who is Laipply talking to here?
5 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
earlybird 4/27/2019 11:52:37 AM (No. 69771)
Read #5. Best explanation of what may have happened here… Years ago we drove down that highway in that area. She knows whereof she speaks...
4 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
DVC 4/27/2019 12:16:54 PM (No. 69760)
Is he another illegal alien?
3 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Corndoggies 4/27/2019 1:36:46 PM (No. 69764)
We own a trucking company and I belong to a few private trucker groups on FB. I´ve seen a couple of videos of this truck. One shows him going down the mountain at a high rate of speed and apparently having lost his brakes. Popular consensus says he lost his brakes because he didn´t know how to come down the mountain and over used his brakes. He also drove past at least one emergency ramp. Some say two but I only saw one on this dashcam video.
Truly I believe this is driver inexperience. He had NO business driving in this area. There´s also talk that his load was overgross, but that might just be yap yap on FB.
I do know this was 100% avoidable and the main reason we only hire very experienced drivers.
10 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
DVC 4/27/2019 1:53:04 PM (No. 69768)
#5, this is WAY past the mountains in the flat country. Not a downgrade problem.
I bet the green card is fake, and either way he is a Mexican, NOT a "Texas man".
7 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Maggie2u 4/27/2019 2:01:20 PM (No. 69752)
In the past two/three years, there has been at least one semi-truck accident in the state of Washington every week. I can´t believe no one has mentioned this in the news. Last year in one accident on I-5 in Tacoma, the cab was tipped over, when the State patrolman pulled up he could see the brake line was tied together with a couple of garbage bags. My son is a longshoreman in Seattle and he tells me that the drivers of the trucks that take the containers after they´re offloaded from the ship or if they´ve come in to be loaded, are all foreigners.
My husband was operations manager for a small head start school in Seattle and he trained the bus drivers for the school. One fellow from China didn´t get the job because he refused to stop at the railroad tracks. He just simply couldn´t understand why it was so important.
7 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
Penney 4/27/2019 7:08:53 PM (No. 69766)
I agree with Reply 7, in that, this stretch of I-70 is the most frightening highway we have ever been on. The road itself is tricky and people drive too fast and when you are among them, you simply can´t slow down or risk being in an accident! Our scariest experience was during a blinding snowstorm when drivers just had to keep going in the line of speeding traffic. There was no exit.
2 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
DVC 4/27/2019 7:52:26 PM (No. 69756)
#22, I am pretty sure you have the wrong stretch of highway in mind. I pulled up sat images and Lakewood is ALL in the flat country east of the mountains. Might be a bit of a little hill, but it is NOT in the mountains at all.
Depending on exactly where it happened, 4 to 8 miles from the nearest foothill edge where there might be a significant grade.
This guy was just hauling along, head not engaged and killed a bunch of people. And of course, the killer survived.
2 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
DVC 4/27/2019 7:58:33 PM (No. 69758)
OK, further location was "Colorado Mills Parkway" which is about 4 miles from the nearest foothills on a sat image.
I suppose it is JUST possible that he lost the brakes on the downgrade and made it 4 miles in the flat country before crashing, but really, if the truck was out of gear with no brakes at all it would have rolled to a stop by then.
Not buying it. 23 year old Mexican doesn´t make me think of skill and judgement as any part of this story.
3 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
Penney 4/28/2019 1:23:11 PM (No. 69751)
The place on I-70 that I´m thinking of was just east of the Eisenhower tunnel. We now avoid that area.
0 people like this.
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