Police Friday morning were looking for a cabbie who fled Church Street after startling a cyclist with car horn blasts — and sending her smack into another car.
The accident was one of three simultaneous emergencies that tied up downtown streets around the Green between 9:30 and 10 a.m.
It was also the latest in a string of incidents in which drivers have hit bicyclists, a problem police say they’re planning to address with new measures amid outrage from the cycling community. (Click here for a story about that.)
According to witnesses, a woman in her late teens or early 20s was riding her bicycle in the far left-hand land of Church Street just north of Chapel when a cab driver started through the light.
“The cab came by and he laid on the horn instead of going around her,” reported Barbara Winkler (pictured). Winkler, who in March opened a luncheonette on the block called Roly Poly, said she was on the sidewalk and witnessed the collision. “He freaked her out.”
According to Winkler; Liz Ferro, a pedestrian on her way to a doctor’s appointment; and Lt. Martin Tchakirides, who interviewed several witnesses, the woman lost control of her bike.
That’s when she hit a white Prism Geo traveling in the next lane of traffic, driven by the young man in this photo. The witnesses said the man didn’t have time to see the cyclist shoot into his path. The driver said the same thing.
“Everybody was going. She crossed over. He [the cabbie] was about to hit her, too,” said the driver, who declined to identify himself.
Medics treated the cyclist on the scene, who was holding her leg in pain but appeared ready to stand up. She was taken by ambulance to hospital with what Tchakirides described as non-life-threatening injuries.
Tchakirides said witnesses got the license plate number of the cab. A police radio bulletin went out. He said he didn’t know what cab company owns the vehicle.
Tchakirides was on the Green attending to a different matter at the time of the accident: a man was bleeding and needed emergency care after his “dialysis let loose.” Meanwhile, two ambulances arrived in front of 900 Chapel St. to attend to an elderly woman who collapsed in the middle of the road.
Police closed off Church Street on the block of the cycling accident, while the ambulances slowed traffic on Chapel. Tchakirides, the downtown district manager, reopened Church Street a little after 10 a.m. — a time when he was supposed to be at morning line-up.
“Bad things,” he mused, “happen in threes.”