PHOENIX -- A Cottonwood woman was jailed Sunday night after she refused to stop for a Yavapai County sheriff's deputy who was trying to pull her over for speeding.

Dibor Roberts said she didn't know who was pulling her over and was trying to make it to a lighted area before stopping.

Roberts, 48, was driving home to Cottonwood from her nursing job in Sedona around 11 p.m. when she saw flashing lights in her rearview mirror.

Roberts told CBS 5 Investigates she was worried that the person trying to pull her over on that dark stretch of road was a police impersonator.

"It was dark. I didn't know who he was. I was afraid, alone, being a woman in that dark area," Roberts said.

Roberts said her paranoia stemmed from recent news reports of a gang of men arrested in Phoenix on charges of impersonating police officers.

"Sometimes they wear the police uniform and assault people," Roberts said.

Sheriff's investigators said the deputy pulled in behind Roberts' Nissan Sentra and turned on his lights and sirens.

Roberts slowed from 65 to 50 mph but did not pull over.

The deputy pulled alongside her so she could see his marked vehicle, then fell back behind her.

Roberts said she continued driving because she was hoping to reach a lighted area in Cottonwood where she could stop.

Investigators said the deputy then pulled alongside Roberts one more time before cutting in front of her and slowing down, forcing her to pull over.

"The sergeant got out of his vehicle. He did stand, as he described, in the light so that he could be seen in full uniform. He drew his weapon," said Yavapai County Sheriff's Office spokesman Scott Reed.

"I tell him again, through my window, 'I just want to be in a light area. It's too dark; I'm afraid,'" Roberts said.

According to a YCSO report, the deputy said he then used his expandable baton to break Roberts' drivers' side passenger window. As he reached through the window to unlock the driver's door, the deputy said, Roberts put her car in gear and accelerated into the back of his Ford Expedition.

Roberts gave a different account.

"He pulled me out and the car jerked because I had my foot on the brakes," she said.

Roberts was jailed on charges of unlawful flight and assaulting an officer.

"The whole thing is just a mistake," Roberts said.

Her husband, Merrill Roberts, agreed.

"Anybody can get a decal and put it on the back of their car and play cop. It's been done already, so I don't understand why he didn't let her go to a safe spot," Merrill Roberts said.

Officials maintained that the deputy did nothing wrong by forcing Roberts to stop or breaking out her window.

"There are certainly circumstances where an officer can, by law and by policy, break glass to reach in and open a car door," Reed said.

Roberts, who was unarmed and had no prior arrest record, maintained that she was only trying to protect herself.

"I'm just thinking, sometimes we just need to communicate and talk to people instead of brutalizing them," Roberts said.