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Cellphone video captured a terrifying Northern California road-rage encounter between two women and a driver who allegedly identified herself to them as a sheriff’s deputy.

The women were traveling along Interstate 80 in Auburn on Saturday when the driver of a pickup truck began swerving between lanes and driving recklessly at a high rate of speed, Vanessa Gladieux told KTLA sister station KTXL.

(Credit: Vanessa Gladieux via KTXL)
(Credit: Vanessa Gladieux via KTXL)

A passenger in Gladieux’s vehicle, Delanie Strykul, starting filming with a cellphone camera.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the incident, but Gladieux said she tried to let the erratic driver pass several times. The woman, later identified by authorities as 50-year-old Deirdre Orozco, instead stopped her pickup in the middle of the freeway.

Eventually, Orozco stopped in the middle of the traffic went up to the pair’s vehicle and claimed to be a sheriff’s deputy, Gladieux said.

Orozco flashed some sort of identification badge and knocked on the passenger side’s rolled-up window as the terrified women called police, the video showed.

They said it was obvious to them she wasn’t a deputy.

“Her identification badge says ‘Visiting Angels’ and then it has her name,” Gladieux told KTXL. “We tried to Google it and Visiting Angels is … a senior home care place.”

Strykul called 911 at that point, her voice filled with panic as she alerted a dispatcher to the unfolding situation. A dispatcher told them to exit the freeway and head to a nearby California Highway Patrol office.

As the two drove off in their vehicle, Orozco’s pickup truck hit them, forcing their car off the side of the road, according to Gladieux.

They managed to escape, and a CHP officer was waiting at the exit.

Dierdre Orozco is seen in a booking photo obtained by KTXL.
Dierdre Orozco is seen in a booking photo obtained by KTXL.

Despite the officer’s presence, Orozco attempted to run out of the truck and pursue the women again, Gladieux said. The CHP officer told her to remain in the vehicle, Gladieux said.

CHP later arrested the driver on suspicion of reckless driving, assault with a deadly weapon — her car, and resisting arrest, Placer County inmate records showed. She was being held on $50,000 bail.

Orozco had been released from jail that morning on a hit-and-run charge, according to KTXL, which reported that she is a bail bonds agent.

A man who said he was a victim of Orozco in the earlier incident described her repeatedly wondering aloud what she could do to get arrested.