Darin Barton looked up to see a semitrailer on Interstate 70 plowing through stopped traffic like a snowplow. Daniel Nolan saw cars popping into the air in his side-view mirror. Edwin Ezeonu heard a bang and then his head hit the top of his car and he was engulfed in flame.
“I was in an inferno,” Ezeonu testified about the moments after the crash. “And at that point, all that I could think about was, ‘That’s it.’ Because I could not see anything other than orange.”
“A big old fireball threw up in the air,” Barton testified. “It was a real loud bang, it was just a lot of carnage, metal screeching, smashing. It was very loud.”
They were among several eyewitnesses to the 28-vehicle pileup on I-70 in Jefferson County who testified in detail Tuesday about the terror they felt when Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos drove his speeding semi into stopped traffic on April 25, 2019, after losing his brakes in Colorado’s high country. Four people were killed.
The trucker is charged with 41 crimes in connection with the crash, including vehicular homicide and assault. Testimony in his trial began Tuesday; a Jefferson County jury will decide whether the fiery crash was a tragic accident or a criminal act.
During opening statements, prosecutors argued that Aguilera-Mederos, 25, missed numerous opportunities to prevent the tragedy and made a series of bad decisions that ultimately rose to a criminal level.
Aguilera-Mederos’ defense attorney, James Colgan, told jurors the crash was an unavoidable catastrophe and that Aguilera-Mederos tried to slow his truck, but was overwhelmed by circumstances out of his control. Aguilera-Mederos sat with his head down at the start of the trial, and dabbed his eyes with a tissue during the prosecution’s opening statement.
“This was someone who could not control a runaway vehicle, even with his best efforts and everything he knew how to do,” Colgan said. “He could not control this vehicle. He wasn’t driving it. No one was capable of driving it at this point.”
The prosecution played video footage taken by bystanders to the crash, which happened under an overpass near Colorado Mills Parkway in Lakewood. Those killed were: Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano, 24, William Bailey, 67, Doyle Harrison, 61, and Stanley Politano, 69. Six others were injured.
“He barrels his 77,000-pound truck into a sea of cars that are sitting ducks and have nowhere to go,” deputy district attorney Kayla Wildeman told jurors. “And BOOM — there’s an explosion.”
The videos showed the truck zoom past one bystander’s van and a state trooper — the semi sped by on the right shoulder — then captured a huge plume of black smoke rising above the highway ahead, followed by flames and sirens. Some in the courtroom wept as they watched footage Tuesday.
West Metro Fire firefighter paramedic Kyle Adams likened the scene to a “war zone” and said the fires were fueled by the truck’s load of lumber and the heat was trapped under the overpass, creating an inferno.
“It was just completely engulfed in flames, there are explosions happening,” he said. “Which as a firefighter is something you rarely see. It’s not like the movies, where a car catches on fire and explodes, that rarely happens. But the tires and gas tanks exploding here was just catastrophic.”
Wildeman told jurors that Aguilera-Mederos was seen driving recklessly hours before the fatal crash, and that he pulled over after he came over Berthoud Pass and knew then his brakes were having problems, but decided to keep driving anyway.
Colgan said Aguilera-Mederos’ brakes were fine when he checked them after the pass, and that the truck was stuck in neutral as he descended on the highway. Because the rig was not in gear, he could not engage the truck’s engine brake. He said Aguilera-Mederos tried to apply the trailer’s brakes and pulled an emergency brake, to no effect.
Aguilera-Mederos was hauling a full load of lumber from Wyoming to Texas when he crashed.
Aguilera-Mederos passed at least one runaway truck ramp after he lost his brakes, Wildeman said, but he did not take it. He also ignored grassy fields beside the interstate and did not try to steer his truck into the open median between the eastbound and westbound lanes, or run it into a guardrail to slow down.
She said Aguilera-Mederos ran away from the crash after his truck finally stopped.
“While people are going towards the fire to save others, the defendant runs away, leaving everything behind him to burn,” she said.
