Colorado officials reach $8.5 million settlement with woman who was left handcuffed in a police car that was hit by a train - eviltoast

Local Colorado officials have reached an $8.5 million settlement with a woman who was hospitalized in 2022 after being left handcuffed in a police SUV that was then hit by a train.

The city of Fort Lupton and town of Platteville, Colorado, agreed on the settlement with the victim, Yareni Rios-Gonzalez, according to a release from the Fort Lupton Police Department. The settlement amount will be split equally between the town and city and paid by their insurers, according to attorney Eric M. Ziporin, whose office represents the city.

Rios, who was a suspect in a road rage case, survived the September 2022 collision but suffered nine broken ribs, a broken arm and other injuries.

  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    To be fair, the former cop who did this isn’t the one who parked the car there. She just placed the suspect into the closest cop car, which happened to be on the tracks. I still think she should be liable for putting someone in that situation, but it’s not as bad as her parking on the tracks and then putting a person in a car she knew was on the tracks. Yeah, she should have noticed the car was on the tracks, but she didn’t park it there and might have assumed nobody would be so fucking stupid as to park on the tracks.

    • rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com
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      5 months ago

      Does her capacity to assume nobody would be that stupid somehow preclude her from seeing that the car was on the train tracks?

      Even in the dark, it’s pretty noticeable when you’re on even the paved part of train tracks that cross a road. I don’t really understand how she couldn’t have realized where the car was parked by sight or by feel while putting the suspect into the back seat.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Not sure why her level of assumption abojt whether cars would be on tracks would matter, if the tracks aren’t visually obscured or something.

      One might assume there’d never be a volcano in Idaho, but when you toss a baby into the volcano you found in Idaho it doesn’t really matter what you would have assumed.