“… guy jumps out passenger door and yells “are you getting lippy with me ******?” and charges at me with… a hammer.”
Late this afternoon, several readers brought a Reddit post titled, Got attacked by 2 dudes in a white van on Thurs in NE, to my attention. It’s a harrowing tale that warrants everyone’s attention.
Here’s the post:
“I was riding my bike to a 4pm class on Sumner in NE. I came to the stop sign at NE 17th and a white van slowly came up to the intersection and stopped. They had the right of way, so I pointed at the stop sign. They both looked at me kinda blankly so I pointed with both hands at the sign and said “look, I have a stop sign, you can go!”
Then van pulls into middle of intersection, guy jumps out passenger door and yells “are you getting lippy with me faggot?” and charges at me with, I shit you not, a hammer. I start my escape but he caught me on the back with a hammer swing. Luckily I was carrying a huge bag full of hard stuff and the hammer blow didn’t do any noticeable damage. I sped off down Sumner, planning on turning onto 14th Pl because it deadends there for automobiles. The guys in the van followed me and ran the stop sign at 15th and Sumner, but I was able to get onto Killingsworth well before they got close to me again.
White van, no windows, WA plates, 2 very normal looking white guys with white t-shirts.
It’s the craziest shit that’s ever happened to me while on my bike or since I’ve lived in Portland. I spent the entire class afterwards imagining ways I could’ve Jackie Chan’d them with my u-lock or my bike polo mallets. I’m glad I didn’t though. They probably had other tools in the van.”
I followed up with the man who posted the account. He’s a 25-year old former preschool teacher named Peter Abram who is currently a student at Portland Community College and was on his way to the Cascade Campus when the incident took place.
The way Abram remembers it, he was simply trying to tell the guys in the van that it was there turn to go and they had the right of way. You know the situation, the person in the car waits and yields to the person on the bike, even though it’s their turn to go. It’s an often frustrating interplay.
“I stopped at the stop sign,” Abram recalled, “pointed at it, had one foot off the pedal… Both of them just looked at me blankly. Then I put both feed down, took both hands off the bar, pointed to the stop sign and motioned for them to cross the intersection.”
It was Abram’s words of “There’s a stop sign, you guys can go!” that apparently set them off and led to the near-altercation.
Fortunately he was able to pedal away.
“When he jumped out of the van, that’s when I started rolling away. I got half a pedal stroke in and turned away just as he swung at me… I pedaled as fast as I could. He hopped back in the car and floored it, you could hear the acceleration, it was really loud.”
Looking back, Abram says he’s content with how it all turned out. He doesn’t feel like the guys in the van had it out for people on bikes specifically, rather that, “It just seemed like the guy was angry and wanted to take it out on someone.”
Abram did report the incident to the police. He called the non-emergency line as soon as he got to his destination. Unfortunately, he wasn’t too impressed with the response he got. He told me he fully understands why the police wouldn’t spend a lot of time on his case, but he was disappointed at their lack of concern. “They said, ‘You can come down [to the station] and file a report if you want to… But they were discouraging sounding. I told them what happened, I’m assuming they’ll take the info down.”
When asked by a Reddit commenter if he filed a police report, here’s how Abram replied:
“I called and they said it wasn’t worth filing a report over because I wasn’t injured and I don’t know any identifying features about the guys. I was surprised. I figured getting hit by a hammer by a crazy dude is grounds for a police report.”
It is. Oregon has laws against harassment (no injury necessary) and assault with a deadly weapon (hammers in this case).
At this point, Abram says he’d just like to move on. He’s back in school after several years he needs to “hit the books.” Hopefully he can concentrate and not let his mind wander off into more Jackie Chan fight scenes.
This is the fourth road rage incident I’ve heard about in detail this week alone. Hard to say if there’s an uptick in general, but it’s more than I usually hear about. Anyone have a theory? And has anyone else seen this van?