An officer on Interstate 25 has a woman in the back of his unit, and he asks her one question twice. He asks whether she is sure the man is not still in the car. She says she is positive, and she says it again. He has checked her for weapons, and the call still goes out to clear that car.
He does the careful thing, and the night goes wrong anyway.
There was no man. The woman in his back seat had been driving when that car went the wrong way down the interstate at ninety and met two police units head on. A 911 caller had passed along her story, a dispatcher had put it on the radio, and every officer on that scene had worked from it since.
You are going to see how the story spread through the scene, in order, and where the facts that could have stopped it were spoken out loud and dropped.
THE SETUP
The tape is Santa Fe Police Department camera footage, cut together by the Midwest Safety channel. The pursuit began with a report of a woman carjacked and kidnapped at knifepoint. The channel’s version carries the chase, the crash, the perimeter, the interview room and the courtroom. We play all of it on this week’s episode.
The woman in this case is not the subject. The subject is the men who did their jobs on that highway and what they were given to do them with. Every one of them had the same input, a story relayed by a stranger, and every decision that night was only as good as that story.
That is the lesson, and it is not a police lesson. You will take an urgent report from someone this year. A neighbor will say there is a man in the yard. A relative will call and say someone followed her home, or a man at a gas station will say somebody has a gun.
What you do in the next ten seconds depends on whether you can tell the part they saw from the part they were told.
The men on this tape could not, and the facts that would have ended it were said out loud at the crash site while the scene was still forming.
THE WALK-THROUGH
ONE SENTENCE STARTS A CHASE
Listen to how the story reaches the police. A dispatcher relays the caller’s report: a woman approached him, said a man with a knife was in her car, and got back in. The car left with both of them in it, and she was screaming to call the police. Every word of that came from the woman herself, through a stranger, onto a radio.
The chase runs the wrong way down Interstate 25 at ninety. Somebody on the radio asks what information they have, and the answer is the dispatcher’s relay again.
If you are ever the one deciding on a relayed story, that is the moment to ask who in the chain saw anything.
Then the car hits two police units head on, and a woman walks back toward an officer with her hands up. She says the man was her boyfriend, Mark, that he has a gun, and that he ran into the brush. The officer checks her for weapons, puts her in his car, and asks whether she is sure the man is not still inside.
Positive, she says, twice, and the call still goes out to clear the car.
THE FACTS WERE ALREADY OUT LOUD
She tells the officers he threatened to kill her and light her on fire, and that there is gas in the car. An officer says he saw nobody get out but her, so the man may still be inside, and the airbags are down so nobody can see.
Then the tape says the thing that should have changed everything.
One voice says it looked like she got out of the driver’s seat, and that she advised she was not driving. Later a voice says she rolled out from the driver’s side, that she said she was not driving, that he relayed it, and that he does not know, man. Another says he was right behind that car and never saw a man exit, so in his mind the man is still in there.
Put those statements next to each other. The only person who came out of that car came out of the driver’s seat, and the only reason anyone believed in a second person is that she said so.
Both facts were said out loud on that scene, both were handed off with a but, and nothing changed.
Here is the conclusion the episode leaves you to reach. She was alone in that car and driving it when it hit those men, and every officer on that highway spent the night hunting someone she invented.
The men who saw it said so out loud, and the story they had been handed still won.
In the middle of it, with an officer dead and a second man no longer breathing, a man on that perimeter takes a few seconds to call home. If they see anything on the news, he says, he is okay.
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HERE’S THE FIX…
JUDGING THE CALL AFTER THE CRASH
Go back to the voice that authorized the pursuit, now after the crash. A man who says he authorized it rebuilds the decision out loud for the men around him. The call was a kidnapping, and she screamed to call the police. Nobody had told him they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and that is why he authorized it.
A little later, somebody tells a shaken officer it was a good pursuit and that the information they had made it solid.
Every one of those statements is right about the facts, and that is exactly the problem. Nobody on that highway was checking the story. The fair test, after your own worst day, is whether the call was right on what you knew.
Then watch what they do with their people. They pull the three who saw it off the line and send them to the station. It is Ash Wednesday, and they go looking for a priest for the men who want one.
And the car they are protecting everyone from, the one with the loudspeaker on it and the Bearcat planned against it, turns out to be empty. Nothing is in it but a jammed trunk and a backpack.
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THE FIRST LINK IN THE CHAIN
While the search runs, an officer passes along what the caller actually said. She drove up to him and asked for help. He said he would call the police, she said no, the man would stab her, and they took off.
She was the driver, he never saw a knife, and what he saw was something black, about as thick as a broomstick.
That is the first link in the chain. The caller did what you would want a stranger to do, and he saw almost nothing.
Investigators found no kidnapping on the surveillance video from where the call was made. The car was stolen, the key fob was in the police unit she sat in, the seat data showed one occupant, and her DNA was on the driver’s airbag.
State police arrested her on March 5, 2022. The charges were two counts of first-degree murder, great bodily injury by vehicle, receiving a stolen vehicle, aggravated fleeing, making a false report and reckless driving. On December 12, 2024, a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life on each count, sixty years in total, and she has appealed.
WHAT CIVILIANS DO WITH THIS
Same seven as the episode, rewritten for the eye, each one tagged with the movement it came from.
1. The first story you hear is a claim, not a fact. This week, when someone brings you urgent news, ask out loud which parts they saw and which parts they were told, and plan from the first list. From One sentence starts a chase.
2. List what nobody saw before you act on what somebody said. Next time you get a report, list the things no one has laid eyes on, and treat each one as unknown until someone does. From The facts were already out loud.
3. Say what you saw, plainly, until someone acts on it. Practice it once this week at work or at home: state one thing you saw that contradicts the plan, and say it twice. From The facts were already out loud.
4. Ask who in the chain saw it with their own eyes. Before you pass on an urgent report this week, name the one person in it who saw something, and if you cannot, say so when you pass it on. From One sentence starts a chase.
5. Stop passing along details you did not source. When you repeat a report this week, drop every detail you cannot name a source for, even if it makes the story weaker. From The facts were already out loud.
6. Judge a decision on what you knew, then fix what you knew. After your next hard call, write the three facts you had when you made it, and one way you could have checked them. From Judging the call after the crash.
7. When the story keeps growing, slow down. This week, when a report gains a new detail each time it is told, stop and write down the first version before you do anything else. From One sentence starts a chase.
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CLOSE
The men on that highway acted on a story nobody had checked, and the facts that would have ended it were spoken at the crash site and dropped. If this made you call someone back and ask what they actually saw, good. If it made you drop one detail from a story you were about to repeat, better. Send it to the one person you know who takes calls like that for a living.
Source footage: Midwest Safety, “How a False Report Killed a Police Officer”, HERE
See it before you live it.
Godspeed y’all.
~ Chris & JP
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