Always Wear a Bullet-Proof Helmet

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 5 Comments

The shooter, Charles Diez.

Here's some incredible out-of-town road rage, via TreeHugger. A motorist in Asheville, North Carolina was so incensed by the sight of a father biking with his 3-year-old kid mounted on a rear seat, that he pulled over and fired a gun at the cycling dad's head:

Police said the driver, Charles Diez, claimed he was upset that the victim was bike riding with his child on the heavily traveled Tunnel Road.

Diez pulled a gun and opened fire, hitting the victim in his bicycle helmet, according to police. They said the bullet penetrated the outer lining of the helmet but did not actually hit the victim's head.

Diez, a firefighter, has been charged with attempted first degree murder. We'll see how the "I shot the father to protect the child" defense holds up in court.

SfResident

Wow. Just Wow.
Spokker

High profile incident stirs cyclist’s emotion so that they get “revenge” on drivers (who are obviously all bloodthirsty monsters) on their super duper bike rides like these.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXvqwva-ChQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hemN2KfJLw
ZA

@ Spokker – Two comments.

1. I don’t think anything warrants assault with a deadly weapon, especially in a situation of such uneven vulnerability to begin with.

2. Video still depends on context, and those videos only provide one view of a specific event. Consider – in your “Halloween in SF” video, clearly there are riders corking an intersection, but the question you should ask is this: were they too early (one whole traffic light phase), or actually timely for the larger mass due to surge through that intersection? I think there’s a fair debate to be had on that subject, for all sides.

That tension is between law and public good, and there is an acute simple majority at every intersection with a vocal demand. Drivers certainly have acute minority rights, but already the context of their relationship with the road has been challenged, and they’re now in a different conversation.
Spokker

“1. I don’t think anything warrants assault with a deadly weapon, especially in a situation of such uneven vulnerability to begin with.”

Agreed.

“I think there’s a fair debate to be had on that subject, for all sides.”

Disagreed. Doing doughnuts in the intersection is not something I’m willing to debate.
A. Mazed

I guess it really did stand up in court…can you believe they reduced the charges?

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