A Colorado police officer was discovered responsible of two misdemeanors on Friday after dealing with expenses for placing a handcuffed girl in a patrol automobile that was parked on lively railroad tracks after which struck by a freight prepare.
The Fort Lupton police officer, Jordan Steinke, is one among two officers dealing with legal expenses after Yareni Rios-Gonzalez, 21, was pulled over on the night time of Sept. 16, 2022, after which struck by the prepare whereas trapped within the police automobile.
Ms. Rios-Gonzalez was stopped by the police after a highway rage incident involving a handgun, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation mentioned final yr.
A Platteville Police Department officer parked his patrol car on the railroad tracks after he pulled Ms. Rios-Gonzalez over, the bureau mentioned.
Two officers from the Fort Lupton police, together with Ms. Steinke, helped him with the site visitors cease, which passed off close to Platteville, a metropolis about 38 miles northeast of Denver.
The Fort Lupton Police Department launched physique digicam and dashboard digicam video that confirmed the officers detaining Ms. Rios-Gonzalez on a darkish, distant highway.
In the footage, a railroad crossing signal might be seen subsequent to a patrol automobile.
Officers are heard within the video shouting instructions at Ms. Rios-Gonzalez, who will get out of her automobile and places her palms up. She is put in handcuffs and repeatedly asks why she was being arrested.
An officer says that she would inform Ms. Rios Gonzalez “in a second” and locations her within the patrol automobile. Officers are proven looking out her automobile and speaking in regards to the site visitors cease when a prepare horn begins to sound.
The horn will get louder and an officer shouts an expletive and repeatedly says, “Oh my God,” simply earlier than the automobile is struck. After the crash, the police looked for the patrol automobile, which was hurled off the monitor and left in a mangled wreck.
The automobile rolled a minimum of twice and traveled a few half-mile, based on a lawsuit filed by Ms. Rios-Gonzalez. She suffered “severe head trauma” and “serious bodily injury,” based on courtroom data.
The Weld County District Attorney’s Office filed expenses in November in opposition to Ms. Steinke and the officer who pulled Ms. Rios-Gonzalez over, Pablo Vazquez. It was not instantly clear whether or not Mr. Vazquez and Ms. Steinke had been nonetheless employed as law enforcement officials.
A lawyer for Ms. Steinke declined to remark. The Fort Lupton Police Department declined to remark, and the Platteville Police Department didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Mr. Vazquez’s lawyer declined to touch upon Sunday in regards to the pending case.
A district courtroom choose, Timothy Kerns, discovered Ms. Steinke responsible of third-degree assault and reckless endangerment.
The choose mentioned Ms. Steinke was discovered not responsible of reckless tried manslaughter as a result of prosecutors did not show she acted knowingly, 9News, a neighborhood news channel, reported.
“While she was consciously aware, she did not take the substantial step creating the risk,” Judge Kerns mentioned. “She did not park the vehicle on the tracks. She was randomly assigned the duty to cuff and detain given the roles required by the high-risk stop.”
Ms. Rios-Gonzalez’s lawyer, Chris Ponce, mentioned his shopper thought the decision was a “just outcome.”
Mr. Ponce is representing Ms. Rios-Gonzalez in a civil swimsuit in opposition to the Platteville and Fort Lupton police departments and the officers concerned within the response.
Mr. Ponce mentioned that Ms. Rios-Gonzalez was nonetheless combating the bodily, cognitive and emotional results from being hit and “being handcuffed in a patrol car with nowhere to go, locked and staring out the window at a freight train coming right at her.”
“That image, it’s something that I think is haunting her on a daily basis,” he mentioned.
Prosecutors had accused Ms. Rios-Gonzalez of pointing a handgun during the road rage incident. She pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge this month, Mr. Ponce said.
She received an unsupervised deferred sentence, which means that the case against her can be dismissed and expunged from her record if she follows conditions set by the court, he said.
Source: www.nytimes.com