From: chris@carnival.lbl.gov (Chris Moll)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.misc
Subject: Bicyclist killed in suspicious hit-run
Followup-To: rec.bicycles.misc
Date: 22 Jan 1993 19:36:00 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: carnival.lbl.gov

From the San Francisco Examiner, Monday Jan 18
-Reprinted without permission-


Bicyclist killed in suspicious hit-run
CHP questions driver's record

By Diana Walsh
of the Examiner Staff

      The woman who is believed to have plowed her Ford Escort into eight 
cyclists, killing one and critically injuring another, may have acted 
intentionally, said Highway Patrol officials.
      Because Linda Scates was convicted of trying to run down three 
pedestrians in 1987 and allegedly gunned her engine a she struck the cyclists 
Saturday, investigators believe the latest collision may not have been an 
accident.
      Scates, who allegedly fled the scene and eluded an intense ground and 
helicopter search, turned herself in Sunday night.
      "Because of her past record and because of the way this thing happened 
. . . we're not looking at this as strictly accidental," said C.W. Hubbs, CHP 
public information officer in Martinez. "Even though her car was loaded (with 
belongings), her view to the front was fine."
      Saturday's hit-and-run occurred in midafternoon on a straight stretch 
of Danville Boulevard in unincorporated Alamo. Police said the cyclists, all 
experienced riders, were pedaling two abreast in a marked bike lane, on the 
side of the two-lane roadway, when they heard a driver gun her car.
      "It was kind of like she punched it, hit them and kept on going," said 
Hubbs.
      "Everyone heard it," said 22-year-old Abel Eisentraut, who was one of 
the cyclists injured. "We thought it was just someone trying to pass us in an 
obnoxious fashion . . . but then she went right through us."
      "I thought it was intentional," added Eisentraut, who suffered only 
scrapes and bruises. "I didn't see how it couldn't have been. It was a real 
straight part of the road."
      Vladimir Nikoli Quinn, 22, was killed and six others were injured, one 
critically. After the incident Hubbs said, the 39 -year-old Scates allegedly 
sped away, abandoned her car about a mile north of the incident and 
disappeared into a wooded area.
      Assisted by bloodhounds and a helicopter, police and sheriffs deputies 
spent several hours Saturday night searching in a forested area in central 
Contra Costa County, but stopped looking when the dogs lost Scates' trail and 
night fell.
      A Walnut Creek man told CHP officer Sunday that he gave a ride to a 
woman, believed to be Scates, whom he found walking alone on an isolated road 
near the area around 10:30 Saturday night. At first the woman told the man she 
needed to get to a pay phone, but seemed nervous and within moments asked to 
be let out.
      With a warrant out for her arrest and her picture being broadcast on 
TV, Scates arrived on the doorstep of a home in Alamo Sunday night and told 
the residents she needed to talk to the police.
      "She came out of the woods, literally," said Greg Cassina, a CHP 
spokesman.
      Officers arrested her there on seven counts of felony hit and run and 
one count of vehicular manslaughter. She was booked into the county jail in 
Martinez.
      Police said they know little about Scates, except that she has worked 
as a nursing assistant. Apparently, she was in the middle of finding permanent 
housing arrangements. She had spent the last several days staying in a room in 
one of Walnut Creek's "better hotels," which police wouldn't name.  Her 
parents, who live in Orinda, told police they had not seen her recently.
      Police records show she was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon 
in 1987 when she tried to run down three pedestrians in Antioch. Although a 
preliminary review indicates the incident was the result of a quarrel with 
neighbors, Hubbs said officials will not learn the full extent of her 
conviction until Department of Motor Vehicles offices reopen after the Martin 
Luther King holiday.
      They said she served time for the incident, but did not know how long 
or where she was jailed.
    The victims of this weekend's hit-and-run incident, all in their early 
20's, were members of the Oaktown Wheelmen Club, a 10-member cycling club 
whose members pedal from 200 to 300 miles a week.

Avid amateur riders
-------------------
      Eisentraut, who is a member of the Wheelmen along with his triplet 
brothers Miles and Zachary, said in an interview Sunday that the friends met 
more than five years ago, when most of them were students at Skyline High 
Shool. All avid cyclers and part-time racers, members of the group would meet 
several times a week to take lengthy rides and train for the amateur racing 
season, which is set to begin at the end of February.
      But it was their weekend ridee which often measured up to 50 miles, 
that most members looked forward to. On Saturday, eight of the Wheelmen set 
out from Peet's Coffee in Berkeley and were into their 40th mile when they hit 
the straightaway stretch on Danvill Boulevard in Alamo. The roadway was 
seemingly quiet until the heard the loud sound of a car reving its engine
followed by th crunch of bicycles smashing against the car.
      In the 1988 Ford Escort's wake lay Quinn, who was later prenounced 
dead at Kaiser Hospital in Walnut Creek Saturday. Twenty two-year-old Dori 
Selinger was listed in critical condition Sunday night with major injuries to 
his head and legs.
      Even in a group of exceptionally dedicated cyclists Quinn stood out. 
A senior at Syracuse University in New York, Quinn decided to finish his three 
remaining course at a local college this spring to pursue his riding interests 
in the Bay Area. A double major in jounalism and French, Quinn, who was 
wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, wanted a career racing bicycles 
before takeing up a more sedentary career.
     "In cycling yoy have to have a will beyond the physical side that makes 
you push yourself enough to win," Eisentraut said.  "He had a real will.  It 
was a real different motivation."
-----------------------------------------

[The Eisentaut brothers are the sons of Albert Eisentraut, a well-know local
frame builder.]
--
Chris Moll                       (510)486-7891
---
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
replaces it with.        -- Tenessee Williams
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.misc