Last week, I wrote about a bicycling mishap few of us have experienced: A man fell off his bike and onto an alligator that bit him.
Today, I am going to mention another cyclist whose ride ended in a way most of us wouldn’t anticipate. Unfortunately, her life ended with that ride.
Tikiya Allen was riding her along Pingree Street on Detroit’s west side last Wednesday. A red Ford Taurus with “distinctive rims and unique paint” roamed the area.
Shots rang from the Taurus’ window. A 20-year old man in another car was struck. So was Ms. Allen.
He is expected to survive. She, tragically, didn’t.
Police in the Motor City believe that she was caught in the crossfire between one or more of the three or four occupants in the Taurus and the man in the other car—or someone else. They are searching for that Taurus and its driver and passengers.
Such a senseless loss of life is always terrible. What makes this killing all the worse is that the 18-year-old Allen was a nursing student at nearby Oakland University—at a time when nurses and other health care professionals are leaving the field because of burnout and trauma induced by working through the COVID-19 epidemic.
Her death makes me wonder how many more people have met, or could meet, similar fates, given the increasing amounts of gun violence during the pandemic.
A GoFundMe account has been set up to help her family.
