The driver of a semi truck charged in a deadly crash two years ago on Interstate 70 was found guilty Friday of four charges of vehicular homicide and several charges of attempted first-degree assault and vehicular assault.

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos faced more than 40 charges and sentence enhancers in Jefferson County, including vehicular homicide, assault with extreme indifference, attempted assault and use of a weapon in a violent crime for the April 2019 crash that tore into heavy traffic and erupted in a blaze on Interstate 70 in Lakewood.

The crash killed four people – Doyle Harrison, William Bailey, Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano and Stanley Politano – and others were injured.

Aguilera-Mederos was found guilty on 27 counts total, 9News reported, that also included reckless driving and careless driving. He was acquitted of 15 counts of attempted first-degree assault.

In closing arguments Friday, each side painted an opposite picture of why Aguilera-Mederos’ brakes failed. Deputy district attorney Kayla Wildeman said he made a series of bad decisions leading up to the crash, including speeding through several mountain towns while riding his brakes, heating them up, failing to use a runaway truck ramp several miles before the crash and recklessly swerving between the highway’s lanes “into a sea of traffic.”

Wildeman said everyone in the room who has driven a car knows the risks that come with it, and that the danger increases when driving a “massive” semi truck in the mountains.

“This is the result of the defendant doing anything but caring about others that were on the road that day,” Wildeman said.

But Aguilera-Mederos’ defense attorney James Colgan blamed his failed brakes on improperly maintained parts, saying the brakes were bad before he left Houston days before and Aguilera-Mederos couldn’t have known they would fail.

He sought to cast doubt on prosecutors’ contentions that Aguilera-Mederos acted with extreme indifference.

“Extreme indifference is something that’s glaringly obvious,” he said. Violent acts including the Boston Marathon bombing and the Aurora theater shooting had “agendas,” but “they didn’t have survivor’s guilt. The defendant has survivor’s guilt. You heard him, he wished he would have been the one who died in this particular accident.”

In tearful testimony he gave in his own defense Thursday, Aguilera-Mederos said when his emergency brake didn’t work, he planned to stay on the shoulder to avoid traffic, but another semi truck stood in the way.

“At the moment of the impact, I closed my eyes and I held the wheel,” he said in Spanish.

Denver Gazette partner 9News contributed to this report.