They Hit Him—For Kicks

(Warning:  This post includes a video some readers might find disturbing.)

When I wrote for a newspaper, I often talked with police officers and their bosses. I had some particularly interesting conversations with one precinct commander who was very well-read and had interests one wouldn’t expect. Anyway, he was talking about someone who’d just been arrested after a fairly long manhunt. The perp paid for something with a check (remember those?) that had his name and address on it.

“We don’t like to admit it,” the commander said. “But as often as not, we catch the bad guys because they do something stupid, whether it’s while they’re committing their crimes or afterwards.”

I thought about that—and felt terrible for Scott Dwight Habermehl and his loved ones—when I read about how he was killed while riding his bicycle to work at the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico last June.

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Albuquerque police shared an image of the car used to strike Habermehl taken from a nearby church. But they couldn’t determine who was in that vehicle until early this year, when they received tips about a video of the incident on social media.

And who posted that video? One of the three boys—aged 16, 13 and 11–in the vehicle.

Police are still searching for the 16-year-old, who is believed to have been in the back seat. The 13-year-old allegedly drove while the 11-year-old rode shotgun, literally and figuratively: as they approached an intersection, he waved a handgun, ducked and laughed as his side of the vehicle hit Habermehl. 

From the conversation in the video, it’s clear that the boys intended to hit Habermehl, whom they apparently didn’t know.

Here is, perhaps, the most paradoxical segment of their conversation:

16-year-old: “Just bump him, brah.” 

13-year-old: “Like bump him?” 

Police say three boys, including an 11-year-old, were accused in connection with the fatal hit-and-run of 63-year-old bicyclist, Scott Habermehl.

16-year-old: “Yeah, just bump him. Go like…15, 20.”

So the oldest boy is telling the “middle” child—the driver—to “bump” Habermehl, but not to go too fast. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see how he is charged when he’s caught, given that the 13-year old has been charged with murder. Police are working with the district attorney’s office and the Children, Youth and Families Department to determine charges for the 11-year-old.

Social media didn’t exist when I had that conversation with a precinct commander. But if it did, and he’d known about the boys’ video, he would’ve cited it as a prime example of what he meant.

Oh, and he probably would’ve said that not only did those boys take Scott Dwight Habermehl’s life, they effectively halted their own—and disrupted, or possibly derailed those of his family.

Because We're The "Low Hanging Fruit"

 Five years ago, on Halloween, Sayfullo Saipov drove a rental truck into the bike lane between the Hudson River and the West Side Highway in Manhattan

Even if he hadn't killed eight cyclists, I would've been as terrified:  I have ridden that lane a number of times, for transportation as well as recreation.  For the cyclists who died that day, some of whom were tourists, it was most likely their only ride on that lane.

The fear and grief I have felt since then has turned to rage: Yesterday, during Saipov's trial, US Attorney Jason Richman recalled that the accused was "smiling" when he asked to hang the Islamic State flag in the hospital room where he was confined after the incident.  "He was proud," Richman told the jurors. "He was happy about the terrorist attack...He had done what he came to do."

We don't have the death penalty in New York State.  Federal law still allows for it, however, and since terrorism is a Federal crime, Saipov could be condemned. If he's not, he will be sentenced to life in prison.

Even his defense lawyers concede that Saipov carried out his attack.  They argue, however, that he should be acquitted of a racketeering charge because they dispute the charge that he carried out the attack so that the Islamic State would allow him to join.  They claim that to do something "so awful" (their words), he must already have been an IS member and that he "had an expectation that he would die by police shooting."

In other words, according to the defense, he wasn't carrying out a gang initiation rite.  Instead, he was trying to be a martyr for the cause.  How that absolves him of racketeering is beyond me, which is probably one reason why I'm not a lawyer.

Whatever Saipov's motives, to me he's no different from the motorist who yelled "More of you should be killed" to cyclists who staged a "die-in" where a truck driver ran down Sarah Schick, a 37-year-old mother of two.  She was riding down a bike lane along Brooklyn's Ninth Street that is protected up from Prospect Park West to Third Avenue, but is separated from a major truck route by nothing more than a couple of lines of paint west of Third--at the exact point where a mixed residential and commercial zone turns into an industrial area.  I know it well:  I used to ride that way quite often when I was living in Park Slope--and there wasn't any bike lane at all on Ninth, or almost anywhere else in the neighborhood outside of Prospect Park.  

Photo by Julianne Cuba for Streetsblog

That motorist and Saipov are also no different from a colleague who, during my second year at Hostos, remarked, "When I see bicyclists, I'd love to run them down." When I told her I am a cyclist, she accused me of "overreacting" and complained to HR.  When I told them about her comment, they said there was "nothing we can do" and questioned my motives for taking umbrage.  "Well, that wasn't any different from saying I should die because I'm trans.  She's saying I should die because of who I am." The HR person dismissed my comparison because cyclists aren't a "protected category" but admonished me to "watch what you say" because that faculty member was a member of a "protected minority"--as if I wasn't.

Anyway, I am disgusted by the way people can so casually call for, or even commit, violence against cyclists.  While Saipov may not have been targeting cyclists because they were cyclists, I am guessing that he saw them as the "low-hanging fruit" to carry out his gang initiation or bid for martryrdom. In that sense, he is no different from the motorist or colleague I've mentioned.   

Cyclist Struck By Hate

It’s one thing when a motorist strikes a cyclist accidentally.

It’s something else when done with intention.

But I’ve heard of few things more despicable than this:



The driver not only drove into a Black Lives Matter protester on a bicycle intentionally; she made a point of expressing her hate.

The latest report says the cyclist’s injuries are not life-threatening. But he may have emotional scars that will take a long time to heal, if they ever do.

I am no lawyer, but I reckon that the woman should be charged, at the very least, with assault with a deadly weapon.