He went off the edge of the road, jack-knifed the truck which rolled onto its side, and dropped a load of 40-foot steel pipe segments and angle iron on those five vehicles. In another report I read, it also says he had spiraled into the northbound lanes and collided with another vehicle, so I am not even sure I can picture that unless it was part of how he was trying to pass those five cars. He killed an off-duty truck driver and injured some other people… Mendoza was not injured.
It was stated by witnesses that he was traveling at speeds of 60-80 mph in an area which has a 45mph speed limit. That road was shut down overnight for 14 hours. He had stated that his brakes went out prior to the accident, but there were skid marks found at the scene, indicating he at least had partial brakes. He needed an interpreter in court, he was arrested under suspicion of vehicular homicide, vehicular assault, reckless driving, and driving without a CDL (cont 👇)

(and he is also apparently not registered as a CDL holder in Mexico). Somewhere between the police report and the court system, they managed to give him less than a year in jail, reduced his 364 day sentence to subtract 81 days for time already served, listed everything as misdemeanor traffic charges, and then to add perfect insult to all this injury, Jefferson County jail now has his race listed as “white”.

In July, FMCSA declared his employer (Monique Trucking) an imminent hazard to public safety and has ordered them to cease all interstate and intrastate operations after the leadership demonstrated a lack of knowledge of safety regulations and has also had multiple violations within the past two years preceding the crash. They employed more than just Ignacio without a valid CDL from what I can tell, so this issue may be much bigger than what I have been researching. In this specific case, I do not have nearly enough words to describe all the failures of our many systems.