USPS denies responsibility after truck carrying mail kills 5 people

WELD COUNTY, Colo. — Every day, thousands of trucks contracted by the United States Postal Service (USPS) are on the road carrying mail, but not even the postal service knows who is driving for them or if the trucks are safe enough to be on the road. 

The truck involved in a deadly crash back in June of 2022 in Weld County was carrying mail yet there’s a lot the postal service said it did not know.

It did not know the driver, Jesus Puebla, did not have a valid license. It did not know the truck was not covered by insurance. The postal service did not know the company hauling its mail even existed.

"USPS did not know at the time of the accident that Puebla’s medical certificate had expired, making his CDL invalid," lawyers representing USPS wrote in a filing. "Nor did USPS know that the truck was not covered by an insurance policy."

And yet, it was still allowed to work for the federal government.

"It’s a broken system," said Grant Lawson, an attorney representing the surviving members of the Godinez family. "It was a cascade of failures that led to these five seconds that took five lives."

In August, attorneys representing the postal service filed a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed by the family of the five people who were killed by the truck. This week, Lawson filed a response on behalf of the family. Five people from the same family died when the truck slammed into their car that was stopped in traffic at 70 mph.

"When you have people who shouldn’t even be driving and trucks that are unsafe and aren’t even insured, it’s causing absolute horror," Lawson said. 

The filing gives 9NEWS a rare look at how little the postal service knows before a truck picks up a load of mail.

USPS contracted with a trucking company named Caminante. Caminante subcontracted the job to a company named Lucky 22.

That is illegal. The postal service still loaded up the truck with mail. Filings show USPS said it did not know anything about Lucky 22. 

"In essence what we have is the US Postal Service saying, well yeah, we didn’t have a contract with this subcontractor, but we didn’t know about them. So, therefore, we shouldn’t be held responsible," Lawson said. 

The Lucky 22 truck drove up Interstate 25 with faulty brakes, a driver with no license, expired insurance and killed five people.

The postal service says that is not their fault.

"There is no question that had the US Postal Service followed its own rules, that this truck would have never been allowed to enter the facility, let alone be loaded with mail and drive down the road," Lawson said. 

The argument lawyers representing USPS are making is that the contractor should be responsible for maintaining the trucks and ensuring the drivers are fit to be behind the wheel. USPS is claiming government immunity which shields them from any liability.

The driver of the truck, Jesus Puebla, was found guilty on all counts in March, which included five counts of vehicular homicide. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison, but the families argue he was only part of the problem that caused that crash. They want to see the postal service and the trucking companies also face consequences.

"There’s no criminal accountability," Lawson said. "For the family, they’re left with, yeah, this guy gets prosecuted, but everyone else is getting a free pass for everything that they did wrong that led to this guy even being allowed to be on the road."