A boycott movement is spreading amongst professional truck drivers following the 110-year prison sentence given this week to Rogel Aguilera-Mederos for the 25-year-old Cuban immigrant’s role in a 2019 crash that caused a 28-car pileup and left four dead.
#JusticeforRogelAguilera, #justiceforrogelaguileramederos, and #BoycottColorado are among the rising hashtags on social media, where numerous truckers are swearing to avoid the state altogether on their routes.
Yesterday, a blockade featuring dozens of semis stretched along both sides of a Denver highway, in solidarity with the condemned man. In addition, a Change.org petition has accrued nearly 3 million signatures in support of giving clemency to Aguilera-Mederos.
Those supporting the convicted truck driver feel the 40 counts he was initially hit with and his ensuing conviction on four counts of vehicular homicide, among others, is undeserved and unfair, fitting the definition of a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights.
The accident does not appear to be any kind of intentional act to kill and maim people that might be deserving of a life sentence. At the time of the April 2019 accident, which occurred along Denver’s I-70, Aguilera-Mederos was coming out of a mountainous area, descending a grade traveling east with a load of wood boards.