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On October 10, 29-year-old Ruben Marquez was formally charged with first-degree murder after allegedly using a truck to kill one person and injure six others outside Golden’s venerable Rock Rest Lodge early on October 9. Accused of accessory to first-degree murder, among other charges, was 25-year-old Ernest Avila, who owned the truck and is believed to have been Marquez’s passenger at the time of the incident.
Murder charges related to driving infractions have been exceedingly rare in Colorado. But that appears to be changing: Marquez is the third driver, and third person of color, in the Denver-Boulder area to face a murder allegation since June.
Before this summer, the most high-profile case in Colorado involving a first-degree-murder accusation against a driver dated back to March 24, 2014. The defendant: Ever Olivos-Gutierrez, who was behind the wheel in a crash that ended the life of seventeen-year-old Juan Carlos Dominguez-Palomino. Olivos-Gutierrez was undocumented, and had racked up three previous driving-under-the-influence busts before striking and killing Dominguez-Palomino; his blood-alcohol content at the time was calculated at approximately .32, four times above the legal limit. In 2015, Olivos-Gutierrez was convicted and sentenced to forty years in prison.
Five years later, in May 2020, Phuong Nu Hoang Dong Nguyen, a 28-year-old Chaffee County resident, was charged with attempted first-degree murder after she was alleged to have intentionally driven her car off an embankment with a five-year-old passenger inside; the child survived. Chaffee County authorities have not responded to Westword‘s inquiries about the status of the case.
At the time of Nguyen’s arrest, the prosecution of Houston truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, who was accused of killing four people and injuring ten others in an April 2019 crash on Interstate 70 near Colorado Mills Parkway, was already underway. While 41 separate allegations were eventually pressed against Aguilera-Mederos, the most serious focused on vehicular homicide, not first-degree murder – and Rob Corry, Aguilera-Mederos’s first attorney (before a cascade of personal legal problems descended upon him), publicly claimed that his client had been overcharged. In December 2021, Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced to 110 years behind bars after being found guilty of 27 of the 41 charges, but following an outcry over the length of the sentence, Governor Jared Polis reduced the stretch to ten years.
Then this June, 34-year-old Amanda Garcia was accused of first-degree murder-extreme indifference, among other charges, for a Boulder County head-on collision that killed Joseph Janicke, 86. After the crash, Garcia allegedly stole an SUV belonging to a person who stopped to help before leading police on a high-speed chase. An affidavit in the case links Garcia to a pair of robberies before the collision, and claims that she acknowledged drinking alcohol and using fentanyl before the crash.
Weeks later, on July 12, the Denver District Attorney’s Office announced a charge of first-degree murder -extreme indifference against nineteen-year-old Avel Aguirre-Sanchez for the death of 23-year-old Terrell Jones. According to prosecutors, Jones was walking across Broadway when Aguirre-Sanchez struck him while traveling at more than 100 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone.
The affidavits issued in the names of Marquez and Avila contend that the victims in the case – including 26-year-old Adrian Ponce, who was declared dead at the scene – were specifically targeted. Investigators contend that a fight that preceded the crash appeared to have been gang-related, and a witness is quoted as saying that “it appeared the truck was being operated deliberately and intentionally” when it hit the group in reverse.
Marquez, who reportedly has numerous previous convictions, remains in custody. His next court date is October 14.
