The widow of a Colorado man killed by an illegal immigrant trucker is outraged as he faces just a year in prison after being charged with and pleading guilty to mere minor traffic violations.
“I’m mad that I’m not going to get justice for my husband,” devastated widow Deann Miller told 9 News. “Mad because the most this man can get is a year for murdering my husband because the DA refused to charge him with more.”
“I lost the man I’ve been with since I was 17.”
Her husband, 64-year-old Scott Miller, was killed in June when a semi driven by 47-year-old Ignacio Cruz-Mendoza veered out of control and dumped a load of steel and iron rods across Highway 285.
The metal landed on top of Miller’s pick-up truck, crushing and killing him on the scene. Four other vehicles were also crushed, and one driver was left with serious injuries.
But Cruz-Mendoza, a Mexican living in the US illegally, was only charged by the Jefferson County District Attorney with minor traffic misdemeanors — careless driving resulting in a death, and careless driving resulting in injury.
After pleading guilty in July he faces just a year in prison and some fines at his sentencing Friday.
Miller is baffled by the charges, especially since Cruz-Mendoza never should have been in the country to begin with.
“He should not have been behind the wheel of that truck, and he knew that, and he chose to do this,” she said.
Mendoza has been removed from the country or left voluntarily at least 16 times since 2002, according to the Denver Post.
He also did not have a valid operator’s license at the time of the wreck.
The charges were uncharacteristically low for such a deadly incident.
Just this year, another truck driver involved in a deadly crash in nearby Weld County was sent to prison for 16 years, according to 9 News.
And a few years earlier the Jefferson County DA sentenced a trucker to 110 years behind bars over a wreck that left four people dead, though the prison term was later reduced.
“It makes me feel like they didn’t do their job. They’re not doing their job. Who else is going to get these rogue truck drivers and these rogue trucking companies off the road if not the people we put in charge to make us safe?” Miller said.
“How many more people have to die on Colorado roads, on any road, before they start doing their job?”
The Jefferson County DA did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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