A Platteville police officer whose cruiser with a handcuffed suspect in the back seat was struck by an oncoming train said that he didn’t know the woman was inside.

That’s according to newly released body worn camera video.

“I didn’t know she was in my car,” the officer told investigators on scene immediately after the horrifying accident.

“She was put in the car. I started moving this way and POW,” he explained. He later told a supervisor that he had “a mishap.”

Platteville police department released three new body-worn camera videos of the incident in response to an open records request made by The Denver Gazette.

The Platteville officer had parked his vehicle on the tracks after he had stopped  the woman for a suspected road rage incident. He is heard on the footage released Thursday saying his stomach felt sick.

“I feel terrible…I’m just concerned for her, ya know?” he said.

That officer is on paid administrative leave according to Platteville police clerk Kerri Brewer.

He also gave new insight into how hard and where the cruiser was hit by the Union Pacific train.

“I didn’t realize how close I was to the tracks,” he told a supervisor on the video. He said the train moved the vehicle “a good 60 yards and spun it.”

The conductor of the Union Pacific locomotive is also seen on the footage and tells an interviewer, “This is the first time I’ve ever hit anybody.”

The train was going around 45 miles per hour and had just come around a bend to a straight-away according to investigative sources. It came racing down the track with its horn blaring.

On the video, the white SUV police vehicle sits crushed off to the side of the train tracks as emergency personnel hack at it with axes, crowbars and the jaws of life. Minutes before, the woman inside the car had been arrested for felony menacing in a suspected road rage incident.

The collision happened north of Platteville three weeks ago, but Yareni Rios-Gonzalez is now out of the hospital and walking, according to her attorney, Paul Wilkinson.  The footage shows she was extricated from the vehicle bleeding and handcuffed, placed on a wheeled stretcher and rushed to the hospital with nine broken ribs, a fractured leg and sternum and a head injury.

What started the incident in the first place

The 911 caller connected to the frightening collision gave The Denver Gazette his version of what led up to the crash.

The 22-year-old man told the Gazette that this all started when Rio-Gonzalez started following him while he was driving north on U.S. Highway 85 on his way home. He said she was the aggressor and that he was on the phone with police for around 15 minutes giving them a minute-by-minute account of a harrowing drive. At one point, he said the driver pointed a gun at him.

The man wished not to be identified because he said he was the victim of a crime.

Rios-Gonzalez, was later apprehended by Fort Lupton and Platteville police officers.

The case is in the hands of the Weld County District Attorney who will decide whether to charge anyone with a crime in connection to the incident. Spokeswoman Krista Henerey said that it’s possible that Rios-Gonzalez and the police officers could be charged.

The Fort Lupton police report obtained by The Gazette described the incident as a “disturbance with weapons” and is headed as investigation into felony menacing on the part of Rios-Gonzalez.

When Fort Lupton police got the call, the report said, the two vehicles, a black Mazda hatchback and a silver Toyota Tundra were headed north on U.S. Highway 85 at Weld County Road 14.5.

The police report describes what happened next: “RP (responding party) is flashing officer.” And then “Turning hazards on, truck is behind.”

The caller told police Rios-Gonzalez was driving alone and that she was armed.

“I saw the barrel pointed at me,” he told the Denver Gazette.  “She was following me too close.” He said her headlights were bearing down on him and “she wouldn’t leave me alone. She could have gotten around me and not caused a problem.”

He said that Rios-Gonzalez was the instigator, adding that he didn’t think he did anything to antagonize her.

But the Rios-Gonzalez’ attorney, Paul Wilkinson, told the Gazette that it was the man who was the instigator. “He was break-checking her. She was afraid of him and afraid for her life. She denies allegations that she pointed a gun at him. She didn’t do anything wrong,” said Wilkinson.

That stretch of U.S. Highway 85 was empty, so there are no witnesses, according to Wilkinson, who said this incident is going to end up “a he-said, she-said.”

Once the man in the Mazda saw that police were on the scene, he continued on home. The police report said that solo Platteville officer then followed Rios-Gonzalez as she drove north on U.S. Highway 85 from mile marker 253 until Weld County 36 where she made a right-hand turn and stopped “125 feet east of Highway 85.”

Bodyworn camera video released by the two Fort Lupton police officers and the one Platteville officer who responded to the incident verified the police report, but whether Rios-Gonzalez actually pointed a gun at the man in the other vehicle and who started the feud may never be resolved.