“If I would have been a pedestrian or on a regular bike, I would have been dead…I feel like an attempt was made on my life. I told the cop I was assaulted but for some reason this was put on the backburner. They told me my case was placed at a low priority.”
— pedicab operator
Last Saturday night at about 2:30 a.m., a pedicab operator was allegedly run down by a man driving a late-model Mercedes while riding east on NW Davis Street in downtown Portland.
The woman, who has requested anonymity because she fears her safety and her job, says the impact from the collision caused her to “fly about twelve feet backwards through the air and land on the ground.”
A witness says the car was traveling at about 40 miles per hour. The impact left the pedicab smashed, but the woman was miraculously unhurt.
I spoke with the victim this morning and she is still in shock and disbelief — not just because of the crash and its aftermath, but because she feels the Police Bureau has not responded adequately to a situation she says could have easily ended in a fatality.
“It’s really strange I’m not hurt worse, he ran into me going really fast,” she said. The woman — who is about six feet tall and was dressed in a full bunny costume — says the crash was “a direct hit” from about a block away, and that it occurred on a well-lit street.
After the collision, the woman says she got up and approached the car. The driver of the car then allegedly offered her $100. At that point, according to a forum posting made by the pedicab operator (which has since been deleted), she yelled at the man in the car, screaming that she didn’t want his money and that she’d rather see him go to jail.
A few minutes later, the man allegedly put his car in reverse and tried to leave the scene. Then, the woman says she and a friend who had arrived at the scene, “stood in front of his car so he wouldn’t leave,” which she admitted was, “not too smart”. At that point, the woman claims the man in the car, “maliciously looked us in the face and ran into us a second time.”
As the man in the car drove away, the pedicab operator reported that her friend then broke his windshield with brass knuckles and that she, “chased him down the street in my f***** bunny suit screaming.”
“I’m scared go back to work because there’s so much drunk driving downtown. The system we have now is you drive downtown, you get drunk, and you drive home.”
The pedicab operator then says she flagged down a cop, but the cop told her, “We don’t have time to play games with you.” (Remember, she was wearing a fluorescent orange bunny costume).
The woman who was hit says she is “in shock and disbelief that nothing has happened” with her case.
“If I would have been a pedestrian or on a regular bike, I would have been dead…I feel like an attempt was made on my life. I told the cop I was assaulted but for some reason this was put on the backburner. They told me my case was placed at a low priority.”
The woman has filed an incident report but she claims the only communication from the police thus far has been an email from an officer with the Central Precinct Neighborhood Response Team.
Adding to the woman’s fears, she says, is the fact that upon impact with her pedicab, “little baggies of drugs flew out of the car,” likely thrown out by the driver. She says she realized they were drugs because nearby homeless people began picking them up and immediately tried to sell them.
“So apparently,” she says, “this dude is a rich drug dealer of some sort, which makes the whole situation a little scarier as far as going to court is concerned.”
The woman has not yet retained the services of a lawyer. She also told me this incident brings a much larger problem into focus; after hours drunk driving downtown. “I’m scared go back to work because there’s so much drunk driving downtown,” she said, “the system we have now is you drive downtown, you get drunk, and you drive home.” She is also worried that new regulations being proposed would make it even harder for taxis and pedicab operators to do business.
The pedicab involved in this incident is operated by Portland Cascadia Pedicabs, which is owned by Ryan Hashagen. Hashagen has been busy recently in a battle with the City’s Revenue Bureau about new regulations being proposed on pedicabs.
Hashagen is aware of this incident and has been in contact with the Portland Police Bureau about the pending investigation.
We have left calls for the officer working on this case, Officer Susan Abrahamson of the Central Precinct’s Neighborhood Response Team, but we have not heard back yet.