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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    7 months ago

    Look, I hate cops as much as the next rational person, but this does not at all look like an attempt to kill the woman. That’s disingenuous at best. This is stupid incompetence and not paying attention, being extremely careless with a person in their care.

    If a parent leaves a gun unattended in their bedroom during a party, and a kid goes and shoots themselves or someone else with it, is that parent or the adults at that party attempting to kill the kid or the other person? No, they are just criminally negligent.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      If a parent leaves a gun unattended in their bedroom during a party

      It is nowhere near as negligent and actively harmful as parking a car on train tracks and then handcuffing a person into the back seat of that car.

      • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Maybe you missed the point where I explicitly said this was criminal negligence. I was arguing it wasn’t intentional homicide, like the guy I replied to said it was.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Right. I’m saying that parking a car on the tracks and then handcuffing someone into it is far more negligent, to the point of crossing over into predictably horrible outcome, not just opening the door to bad outcomes like normal negligence does.

          Tying someone to the railroad tracks isn’t what drunk idiots do in old westerns; it’s what the bad guys do.