Today is Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.
Emily Dickinson, was a great a poet, but I doubt she had any contact with Latinx culture. Most likely, she never rode a bicycle, either. So, when she penned
Because I could not stop for Death--
I don't think she had this in mind:
Enjoy the day!
I know I could've been hurt even worse than I was when I was "doored" last week. That should make me grateful, or at least feel better, I suppose.
So should the knowledge that she had no intention of hurting me: Had she not opened the door of her 2015 Toyota into my side, we probably wouldn't have interacted in any way at all. If she'd noticed me at all, I would have been just another cyclist.
I guess that knowledge should make me feel a little better, but it doesn't. If anything, it's just as disturbing, to me, as the knowledge of what happened to Michelle Marie Weissman in Las Vegas on Sunday.
The 56-year-old was pedaling down south on the Hollywood Boulevard bike lane around 7:30 that morning. As she passed a couple strolling on the adjacent sidewalk, she greeted them: "Good morning."
At that moment, a 22-year-old, identified as Rodrigo Cruz, drove a 2015 Toyota Sienna van"50 to 60 miles an hour, according to his own admission. He was racing other drivers, he said.
For reasons he hasn't explained, he swerved into the bike lane. His passenger, identified only as "Gio", leaned from the windowsill in an attempt to strike the couple.
He missed. But a little further down, he shoved Weissman to the ground. She wore a helmet, but it wasn't enough--probably, nothing would have been--to save her from the impact of being pushed to the pavement by a guy in a speeding van. Witnesses tried to give her CPR, but that wasn't enough, either, to save her life.
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| Michelle Marie Weissman (l) and Rodrigo Cruz |
In school, we all learn Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. One thing "Gio" probably thought about was that he wasn't exempt from that law: The momentum of his hitting her pushed him backward, out of the Sienna's windowsill, and onto the pavement. He met the same fate as Ms. Weissman.
Cruz fled the scene but, based on information from witnesses---including three women who'd been following the van in a gold Ford Focus before the incident--tracked him and the Sienna down. He initially denied he'd been driving the van but finally admitted that he didn't go back to check on "Gio" because he was "scared."
He had good reason to be. He's being held without bail, not only for murder and leaving the scene of an accident, but for a parole violation.
Of course, none of this does Michelle Marie Weissman any good. But at least if he is charged with murder, it will be good to know that the authorities, somewhere, have taken serious action against someone who turned his vehicle into a deadly weapon against a cyclist.
