Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Girl Who Was Hit By a Train - The Yareni Rios-Gonzalez Story

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Yareni Rios-Gonzalez was involved in a reported road-rage incident in Weld County, Colorado, on September 16, 2022, after a man called 911 claiming she tailgated him and pointed a firearm. Police pulled her over near Platteville, where officers from two departments handcuffed her and placed her in the back of a patrol SUV that one officer had parked directly on railroad tracks. While officers searched her truck, a freight train approached; body-cam video shows Yareni screaming for help moments before the train slammed into the police vehicle, critically injuring her and leaving her with a traumatic brain injury, broken bones, and requiring surgery.

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and Hulu on Disney Plus. So this cop car is parked on the train tracks, and there's a suspect handcuffed inside. And then suddenly, a train comes and... Well, first, let me tell you how all this got started. So this all got started with this woman, Uranie. And Uranie is 20 years old, living in Colorado. And Uranie, she looks like a nice woman,

but apparently she's a bit of an angry driver. So one night in 2022, she's out cruising around, and there's another car driving near her. And I don't know if this other car cut her off or what happened, but Uranie gets super pissed. And she starts tailgating this guy. And at some point, she allegedly pulls out a pistol and points it at him. And this guy, he gets all scared and he calls 911,

he's like, there's a woman pointing a gun at me. And so they dispatch police, and police go out looking for her. A few minutes later, an officer spots her. and he turns on his lights to pull her over. But Uranie, she doesn't respond right away. She just keeps on driving. Now eventually, she does pull over right as she's crossing the train tracks. And when the officer stops behind her, he parks his police cruiser right on those tracks.

Then another cop pulls up and parks right behind the first car and then goes to assist that first officer. Now, these cops think Uranie's got a gun. So they're treating her as if she possibly has one. And they're like barking orders at her and she cooperates and does what she's told. Put your hands up. Turn around. Turn around. Turn around.

Put your hands up higher. I want you to set your phone down as they have you drove. So then the officer goes to put uranium handcuffs. Keep your hands above your head. Don't move. What's going on? We'll explain everything in a second. Then they take my cell phone, please.

No one else is in the truck, sir. Can I please get my cell phone? We'll get it free. Then they take her to the officer's cruiser, that one that's still parked on the train tracks. Now, at this point, Uranie doesn't seem to notice. I guess because she's in the middle of being arrested. The only thing that she seems to be concerned about is her cell phone. Why?

Do you have anything on you that's going to poke me, sick to hurt me? No, ma'am, but can I please get my cell phone? We'll get your cell phone in a second. Is there any weapons in the car? Ready? No, ma'am, there's nothing else. There's no weapons in the car? Okay.

But there actually is a weapon in the car. According to the officers, they eventually find a handgun in her truck, along with a couple of rounds of ammunition. So at this point, they throw her in the back of the cruiser, and she has to wait there while the officers go to search her truck to see if they can find the gun that she was accused of pointing at that other driver. It took her a long time to pull over. I got a holster right here in the passenger seat. Okay. I just, it took her a very long time to pull over. Do you see your toss anything?

I, she could have because it took her a long time to pull over. And as they're searching Uranie's truck, suddenly, in the background, a train horn starts going off. And if you listen, you can actually hear it as they're talking. She could have because when I was behind her, she was driving slow enough. Yeah. So she could have tossed something. Toss it out the window? She could have out that window.

And as they carry on, that horn keeps getting loudly enough. and louder, because there's a freight train on the tracks and it's getting closer and closer. Now, Uranie is still in the back of the police car, and I assume by now that she's probably seen this train because it's coming right at her, and I'm sure she's in the car freaking out, but there's nothing she can do. Not only are the doors locked, but she's handcuffed. And so she starts screaming for help, but I guess none of the officers hear her because they're still searching through her truck.

But then, right in that moment, they finally seemed to hear the horn and realize what's about to happen. No, that's a... But by the time the officers realized the train is coming right toward that police car, it's too late to do anything, so they make sure to get the hell away from it so that they don't get hurt. Here's actually another angle where you can see the guy yelling to stay back. With your car!

And then of course the train comes barreling in and kaboom, it knocks the piss out of the piss out of that police cruiser and sends it flying. And of course, poor Uranie goes with it. And the officers are like, oh shit! And immediately one of them calls for help. 3.4.6, patrol car was just hit by a train. Dispast up to 3.4.6. Did us medical emergency.

The suspect was in the vehicle that was hit by the train. And now the officers are freaking out because they don't know whether she's alive or not. So they start running toward where the police cruiser was thrown. And when they get there, you can see that it's all fucked up. Like, here's a picture of it. Look at that. It doesn't even look like a car anymore. There's no telling how many times it rolled.

And Uranie is in there somewhere, probably knocked out unconscious, but she's still alive somehow. She's conscious and breathing. She can't talk, but she's moaning. Probably that. Just one? Just one. Probably that. She just went unconscious.

So at some point an ambulance gets there, and they take her and they rush her off to the hospital, and she's got to have, like, all kinds of surgeries and stuff. This left her with a traumatic brain injury, not. broken ribs, a broken arm, a fractured sternum, broken teeth, like all kinds of shiots wrong with her. So she's in the hospital for a while. But her story isn't completely over yet. Now, as you already know, this is a huge screw up by the police department. Like, you just can't leave someone handcuffed in a police car with no way to get out while you're parked on the train tracks. So of course, this story is so insane that pretty quickly this body cam footage gets out and goes public and it instantly blows the fuck up.

And the video's shocking, so people are like sharing it, like all kinds of news outlets are reporting on the story. And this screw up was so bad for the police department that two of the officers are criminally charged, not just sued, but facing actual jail time over this. So in 2023, one of the officers goes to court and she's found guilty of reckless endangerment and third degree assault and she's fired from her job, and she's sentenced to supervised probation and community service.

And I couldn't find a mugshot of her, but here's what she looks like in real life. What I saw and what you went through never leaves me. If I can ask anything, you're any, anything, please do not use this experience to hate other police officers. You can blame me and you should. Then another officer also goes to court over this, and he takes a plea deal for reckless endangerment, and he gets sentenced to probation, and he's also fired from his job. Here's a picture of him in real life. And then there's Uranie.

Now, Uranie eventually gets out of the hospital, and as soon as she can, she gets a lawyer, and she sues the shit out of the two police departments that were involved in this. And about a year later, in 2024, the two departments finally agree to settle with her. out of court and they agree to pay $8.5 million. Damn. Good for her. And by the way, this accident happened a few years ago, so I don't know if she's actually made a full recovery from her injuries or not.

She was in the car, in handcuffs, couldn't move, saw the train coming with screaming. Those emotional damages would have been exorbitant. But I looked up her Instagram and I found it and it looks like he's doing all right.