A 16-year-old was riding a fixed gear (which had already been stolen once) in Magnolia Tuesday when a driver allegedly stopped in front of him, got out of the vehicle and chucked a soccer ball at him, knocking him to the ground and injuring him, according to an anonymous account by a Magnolia Voice reader:
At approximately 7:10 p.m. on Tuesday, July 27 a 16 year-old Queen Anne/Magnolia resident was riding his bicycle on the 2700 block of Gilman Avenue West when a vehicle stopped in front of him. The driver (a Caucasian male, 18-21, shirtless, wearing red shorts, about 6′ tall, with short blond hair and an athletic build), exited the vehicle with a soccer ball and used the ball to knock the rider off his bicycle. The rider was thrown to the ground violently. The driver continued to attack the rider, who, knowing he was seriously injured, fled. A passenger in the driver’s car took the bicycle and they fled. The vehicle was a silver or gray late-model Subaru Outback or similar without a license plate on the front.
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It is possible that the driver purchased the bike after it had been stolen and believed the rider had stolen it from him. During the attack, he yelled something about where the “Lemond” was. But knocking a bicyclist off a bike going downhill at perhaps 20+ mph is not the appropriate way to deal with a situation like this.
The bike is “a Cervelo P2-SL frameset with all custom parts and a fixed gear (one-speed).” Here’s a pic (it has drop bars now):
