Colorado prosecutor showed off brake-shoe gift after helping convict 26-year-old trucker sentenced to 110 years for deadly crash
- Rogel Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced to 110 years in prison over a crash that killed four people.
- He said his brakes failed, but a state judge said that the law mandated the lengthy sentence.
After a 26-year-old truck driver received a 110-year prison sentence for his role in a deadly crash, a Colorado prosecutor who helped convict him drew outrage for showing off a brake shoe she was gifted on social media.
Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, a 26-year-old truck driver who said his brakes failed during a 2019 crash that killed four people, was convicted on 27 counts in October. At Aguilera-Mederos' December 13 sentencing, Jefferson County District Judge A. Bruce Jones said state law required the sentences be served consecutively, leading to a 110-year prison term.
Kayla Wildeman, a Jefferson County deputy district attorney, was part of a team of prosecutors that helped convict Aguilera-Mederos. She posted a photo of a brake shoe from a semitrailer and an accompanying plaque on Facebook, according to KUSA, although it's unclear when she posted the photo. Wildeman's social-media pages have since been deactivated.
Wildeman said in her Facebook post that she received the brake shoe as a gift from Jared Maritsky, a fellow deputy district attorney, according to KUSA.
"I sure am grateful this trial brought you into my career as both a colleague and a friend," Wildeman wrote in the post, a screenshot of which was obtained by KUSA.
Jefferson County District Attorney Alexis King said in a statement about the purported gift that the brake shoe was "not a piece of evidence from the case," according to KUSA.
"The post was in very poor taste and does not reflect the values of my administration," the statement reads.
The Jefferson County district attorney's office did not immediately respond Tuesday to Insider's request for comment. Insider's attempts to reach Wildeman and Maritsky were unsuccessful.
Aguilera-Mederos' attorney called for disciplinary action against the prosecutors, according to KMGH.
"To make any kind of mockery or behave as if this was a ball game of winning and losing is an outrage," Leonard Martinez, Aguilera-Mederos' attorney, said, as quoted by KMGH. "This was about four people losing their lives and another person facing the prospect of a 110-year prison sentence."
More than 3.7 million people have signed a petition asking Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to commute the sentence or grant Aguilera-Mederos clemency. A spokesperson for Polis previously told Insider's Connor Perrett that, "We are aware of this issue, the Governor and his team review each clemency application individually."
On Tuesday, Kim Kardashian West called Aguilera-Mederos' long prison sentence "unfair" in a Twitter thread. She called on Polis to change Colorado's laws on mandatory minimum sentences and commute Aguilera-Mederos' sentence.
Kardashian West wrote that Wildeman's Facebook post was "another shocking part of the case."
"For some reason the prosecutor thought it would be funny to post a photo of a brake shoe trophy she received from a colleague with a plaque?" Kardashian West tweeted. "Makes me so sick."