From: annie@garnet.berkeley.edu  (Anne Jessop)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc
Subject: Re: Car intentionally runs down cyclists!
Date: 22 Jan 1993 03:30:52 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu
Originator: annie@garnet.berkeley.edu

>In article <2936635146.1.p00004@psilink.com> "Michael Smith" <p00004@psilink.com> writes:
>>>The worst nightmare of any cyclist happened!  A Contra Costa woman apparently


Forgive me if I've got the attribution wrong for this snippet.  I assume
we all know what happened by now, and are all similarly horrified.

According to this morning's SF Chronicle, the whole thing is a real soap
opera.  Linda Scates' husband was killed in a similar "accident" in '85. 
Some woman rammed her car into his _van_  on purpose and caused an
accident which killed him, and she was convicted of some kind of murder
(again, if someone can help us all with what the different degrees are, it
would help further discussion) but she was found not guilty because she
was insane.  She was incarcerated in a Bay area mental health facility.

That was '85.  "Doctors say" that this accident "accelerated Scates'
mental deterioration."  She started "gardening loudly" at 3 am, her
neghbor called police to complain, and this led to her threatening him
with a pickaxe the next day (as someone else mentioned), and then buying a
shotgun at _K Mart_ (Did y'all know you can buy guns at fuckin' KMART???)
, threatening him with that the day after that, and then police took her away.
This was in '86-'87.  She served a sentence that was combined with another
incident where she ran some _pedestrians_ off the road at the same
facility where the woman who killed her husband was.  [This is what was in
the paper, but the article never says whether they had any communication. 
Just sounds like _Current Affair_ type stuff to me...]  But, regardless,
they were at the same institution at the same time.  Scates was released
after a few months, and then _this_ happened.  

She reportedly told a bartender at a Doubletree Hotel _bar_ that "she felt
like doing something bad."  She then went out on the road and paced the
cyclists, and then accelerated into them, killing Vladimir and critically
injuring another rider to the point that he now is still in "critical
condition" and has had to have part of his leg amputated.  

The last bit that I remember from what I read this morning is that, after
she turned herself in and was arraigned yesterday, she "smirked" and said
that she wished she had harmed more people before she gave up.


Now, obviously, she is a sick puppy.  BUT! I don't know about the rest of
you all, but there is something in this story which seems to completely
negate all our discussions about "how to turn left," "how to tell off
people who ride the wrong way," "whether we should use a mirror or not and
whether the people who do use them are pussies".  Being struck from
behind ON PURPOSE is horrifying, and I think it's something that those of
us who admit that we are concerned about what is going on behind us worry
about, on some level or another.  Maybe it doesn't register as worry. 
Maybe one is "alert," or "cautious," or "responsible."  Fact remains, we
love a sport, a way of life (sport, commuting, whatever) which can kill
us.  And it doesn't matter how "careful" we are.  Someone can come up
behind us and be crazy, and want to run us down for whatever reason.  To
go back to another thread, we could be intentionally run down if we "flip
someone the bird," if we're pissed off because somone has squeezed us out
of a lane or cut us off or knocked us over because they wanted a parking
spot right there where we happen to be.

Forgive me for being pedantic or moralistic, please.  This story just
scares me, and does something to my faith (the faith we all have, no
matter how responsible we are) that other users of the road will respect us.


Regards, 
Annie

 

Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc