Cops Realize They Just Made the Worst Mistake of Their Lives

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Cops Realize They Just Made the Worst Mistake of Their Lives

On the night of September 16th, 2022, the plains of Weld County, Colorado, stretched into darkness beneath a moonless sky. Highway 85 cut through the fields like a black ribbon, its edges lined with telephone poles and railroad crossings that most locals barely noticed anymore. It was the kind of quiet rural road where sirens carried for miles and the rumble of a freight train felt like distant thunder.

At 10:37 p.m., the quiet cracked.

A 911 dispatcher received a frantic call from a man claiming a woman in a dark Toyota Tundra had been tailgating him aggressively. He said she’d swerved at him, yelled through her window, and—most alarming of all—pointed a handgun in his direction.

“I think she just pulled a gun on me,” he insisted. “We’re heading south on 85. She’s still behind me.”

Within minutes, officers from Fort Lupton and nearby Platteville were dispatched. Road rage incidents were unpredictable. Add a firearm to the equation, and the situation could turn deadly in seconds.

Sergeant Pablo Vasquez of the Platteville Police Department was among the first to respond. He accelerated down the highway, lights flashing red and blue against the dark fields. Officer Jordan Steinke from Fort Lupton followed close behind.

The Toyota Tundra soon came into view, its brake lights flickering as it slowed. The vehicles were approaching a railroad crossing—one of many that dotted the highway.

“Still got visual,” Vasquez radioed.

The Tundra continued a short distance before finally pulling to the right side of the road—just beyond the crossing.

Or so it seemed.

Vasquez pulled in behind her. In the rush of adrenaline and urgency, neither he nor Steinke registered exactly where his patrol vehicle had stopped. The rails gleamed faintly beneath his tires, but in the flashing lights and shifting shadows, the danger went unnoticed.

Officer Steinke stepped out, her hand resting near her holster.

“Driver, let me see your hands!” she shouted.

The woman complied. Her hands emerged from the window.

She was 20-year-old Yareni Rios-Gonzalez, a Transportation Security Administration employee, a wife, and a mother. At that moment, though, the officers didn’t know her name. They only knew what they’d been told—that she was possibly armed and had threatened another driver.

Rios-Gonzalez exited the truck slowly, following commands precisely. She was directed to kneel on the pavement. Her voice trembled.

“What’s going on? Why am I being arrested?”

“We’ll explain in a second,” an officer responded.

She was handcuffed, searched, and led toward a patrol vehicle.

In the confusion of multiple agencies on scene, something critical happened—something that would later be replayed in courtrooms, in newsrooms, and in the minds of everyone present that night.

Instead of placing Rios-Gonzalez in her own patrol car, Officer Steinke placed her in the back of Sergeant Vasquez’s vehicle.

The same vehicle parked directly on the railroad tracks.

The back door shut with a dull thud.

Inside, Rios-Gonzalez sat handcuffed, unable to open the door, unable to move her hands, unable to see clearly through the partition and tinted glass. She tried to process what was happening. She had been arguing with a driver, yes. She had a firearm in her truck, legally owned. But she hadn’t expected this.

Outside, officers searched her vehicle.

“She took a long time to pull over,” one commented.

“There’s a holster on the passenger seat,” another said.

They were focused on gathering evidence. Focused on the reported gun. Focused on procedure.

No one was looking down the tracks.

Then came the sound.

At first, it blended into the background hum of the highway. A low vibration. A distant rumble.

One officer paused.

“Is that—?”

Headlights burst around a bend in the track.

A freight train.

Fifty miles per hour.

Eleven thousand tons of steel and cargo.

The engineer had seen flashing police lights in the distance. He assumed they were positioned safely off the tracks. It wasn’t until the train rounded the curve that the patrol vehicle came fully into view.

Brakes screamed.

Sparks erupted.

But momentum doesn’t negotiate.

“Move your car!” someone yelled.

It was too late.

The impact exploded through the night like a bomb.

The patrol vehicle spun violently, metal twisting, glass shattering, its rear end thrown nearly sixty yards down the tracks.

For half a second, there was stunned silence.

Then someone screamed.

“Was she in there?”

“Oh my God—was she in there?”

The realization hit like a second collision.

She had been in the back seat.

Handcuffed.

Trapped.

Officers sprinted down the tracks toward the wreckage. Their boots crunched over broken glass and twisted metal. The patrol car was mangled, its rear compartment crushed and distorted.

“Ma’am! Can you hear me?”

A faint sound.

Moaning.

She was alive.

Barely.

Blood ran down her face. Her body was contorted in the destroyed back seat. Her arm bent unnaturally. Her breathing was shallow and ragged.

“Get EMS now!”

Firefighters arrived with heavy extraction tools. Sparks flew again as they cut into the wrecked vehicle. Officers stood back, pale and shaking, watching the consequences of their oversight unfold.

Officer Steinke stood frozen at first, staring at the crushed car.

“Oh my God,” she whispered over and over.

The enormity of it was impossible to ignore. She had closed that door. She had walked away.

And now a young woman might die because of it.

Paramedics worked quickly, stabilizing Rios-Gonzalez as best they could. She drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point she stopped responding entirely.

“Stay with us!” someone pleaded.

Miraculously, she survived the extraction.

But survival did not mean unharmed.

At the hospital, doctors would later determine she had suffered a traumatic brain injury, multiple broken ribs, a broken arm, and the loss of several teeth. Her body bore the violent imprint of eleven thousand tons of unstoppable force.

Back at the scene, investigators from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation arrived. The crash site glowed under portable lights. The train stood halted along the tracks like a massive, silent witness.

One agent surveyed the crushed patrol car and shook his head.

“Can you imagine,” he said quietly, “sitting back there, hands cuffed, seeing that train coming?”

There was no good answer.

Two investigations began that night.

One into the alleged road rage incident.

The other into the train collision.

Dashcam footage from Officer Steinke’s patrol car would later show the horrifying moment in clear detail—the train’s lights approaching, the sudden realization, the impact that sent debris flying across the highway.

Bodycam footage captured the panic afterward.

“Was she in there?”

“Yes—she was in there!”

Those words would echo in courtrooms months later.

Sergeant Vasquez admitted he hadn’t realized how close he’d parked to the tracks.

“I thought I cleared them,” he said.

Officer Steinke, visibly shaken, was placed on leave.

In the days that followed, the story spread nationwide.

A handcuffed woman placed in a patrol car on railroad tracks. Struck by a freight train. Survived.

Public outrage surged.

How could trained officers make such a catastrophic mistake?

Was it negligence? Tunnel vision? Poor communication?

Or all of the above?

Prosecutors reviewed the evidence carefully.

In July 2023, Officer Jordan Steinke was found guilty of reckless endangerment and third-degree assault. She received 30 months of probation and 100 hours of community service.

Sergeant Pablo Vasquez pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment and was sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation.

Both officers were fired.

But criminal sentences were only part of the story.

Rios-Gonzalez faced a long, painful recovery. Physical therapy. Cognitive rehabilitation. Emotional trauma. The memory of headlights bearing down while she sat helpless in the back of a locked car.

Her lawyers argued that no suspect—regardless of accusation—deserved to be placed in such reckless danger.

In June 2024, she reached an $8.5 million settlement with the cities of Fort Lupton and Platteville.

For many, the settlement represented accountability.

For others, it was a reminder that some mistakes can never truly be undone.

The railroad crossing on Highway 85 looks unremarkable in daylight. Cars pass over the tracks without thinking. Drivers glance left and right automatically.

But for the officers who were there that night, the image of twisted metal under flashing lights will never fade.

In interviews afterward, investigators emphasized how quickly situational awareness can collapse under pressure. Officers responding to potentially armed suspects focus on immediate threats. They fixate on hands, on weapons, on commands.

But safety is layered. It’s environmental. It’s constant.

One overlooked detail can change everything.

The tragedy of that night wasn’t born of malice. It wasn’t a dramatic gunfight or a calculated act. It was something quieter—and in some ways more terrifying.

It was a lapse.

A missed detail.

A failure to look down.

And in policing, as in life, small oversights can carry enormous consequences.

For Rios-Gonzalez, the scars remain—physical and invisible.

For Steinke and Vasquez, their careers ended in the shadow of flashing lights and a freight train’s horn.

For the public, the case became a stark reminder: authority carries responsibility, and custody carries duty of care.

A patrol car is meant to be a place of security—even for a suspect.

That night, it became something else.

As freight trains continue to roll through Weld County under open skies, the crossing stands as silent testimony to a moment when everything went wrong.

And to the terrible instant when a group of officers realized they had just made the worst mistake of their lives.