Rogel Aguilera-Mederos: Kim Kardashian thanks Colorado Governor after trucker’s sentence reduced to 10 years

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced to 110 years in jail over deadly 2019 car crash that left four dead

Kim Kardashian has thanked Colorado governor Jared Polis for reducing truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’s lengthy 110-year prison sentence over a deadly car crash to 10 years.

On 13 December 2021, Judge A Bruce Jones sentenced Aguilera-Mederos to over a century in jail for his role in a pile-up on a Colorado highway in 2019. Aguilera-Mederos was found guilty of 27 charges, including four counts of vehicular homicide.

A Cuban immigrant who was 23 at the time, Aguilera-Mederos was driving an 18-wheeler semi-truck along Interstate 70 in Lakewood, near Denver, for his job with a trucking company. After the vehicle’s brakes failed, it crashed into 28 cars, causing a huge explosion and killing four commuters stuck in rush hour traffic.

Earlier this month, Kardashian backed growing calls for Polis to commute Aguilera-Mederos’s sentence. She said she took a “deep dive” into Aguilera-Medero’s case, which has garnered national and international attention, to “figure out what the situation is”.

At the time, in posts addressed to her 271 million followers, Kardashian wrote: “He [Aguilera-Mederos} was not drunk or under the influence [at the time of the crash]. His brakes on the semi-tractor trailer failed.”

On Thursday (30 December), Governor Polis reduced Aguilera-Mederos’s jail time to 10 years.

In his commutation letter to Aguilera-Mederos, Polis wrote: “The length of your 110-year sentence is simply not commensurate with your actions, nor with penalties handed down to others for similar crimes.”

Screenshot of Kim Kardashian’s post thanking Governor Polis for granting trucker clemency (Instagram/@kimkardashian)

Soon after, Kardashian, who has emerged a staunch advocate of US prison reform, shared a copy of the official executive order, and thanked Polis for his “empathy and leadership” on this case, in a series of Instagram stories.

The 41-year-old reality TV star wrote on Instagram: “While his new sentence is 10 years, he will now have an opportunity to come home in five years and be with his son and wife. [This case] was a clear example of why mandatory minimums don’t work and need to be abolished.”

Kardashian, who is studying to become a lawyer, recently announced she had passed California’s first-year law students exam (or the “baby bar”).