Man hit while bicycling downtown has died from injuries

40-year-old Johnathan Henderson moved to Portland four years ago and spent most of his time riding his beloved singlespeed “fixie” on downtown streets — filling one delivery order after another. Around 9:30 pm on March 12th, he was involved in a collision with the driver of a Land Rover SUV near the intersection of Southwest Alder and 3rd. The impact with the SUV knocked Henderson to the ground and he was taken to the hospital in a coma. He died on March 18th at 3:02 pm.

Police have yet to release an update about the death or details of the crash (their initial statement is here), but BikePortland has learned that Henderson’s bike came to rest in the bike lane on Alder just east of the SW 3rd. The SUV was stopped in the left-most lane. This section of Alder is known to be stressful because it’s a de facto on-ramp to I-5 via the Morrison Bridge. SW 3rd is one-way southbound and Alder is one-way eastbound.

While police continue their investigation, Henderson’s family and friends are reeling at their loss. His family — who he hadn’t seen for many years — arrived from out of state to be around his bed at the hospital. His close friend and neighbor, Filly, is managing Henderson’s belongings and memorial details.

“He was really my big brother,” Filly shared with me in a phone call a few minutes ago, struggling to speak through the sadness.

“I saw him the day before and he was just stressed about bills and stuff. He was living day-to-day just hustling and doing deliveries for UberEats and Instacart.”

Henderson loved riding his “Indigo 96” fixed gear. Filly said he’d put over 11,000 miles of delivery miles in Portland and was pulling 40-mile a day shifts. When he wasn’t knocking out a delivery, he was doing local group rides or hanging out with his dog “Callie” (short for SuperCaliFunkyPuppy). A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Henderson moved to Portland from Detroit by himself and found his chosen family through bicycling. He was a mainstay at the Thursday Night Ride (“TNR”), where he was a proud corker he kept the ride safe. On the Tuesday he was hit, Henderson had just peeled off from a weekly, social, fixed-gear ride.

He would often leave rides early to make a delivery. Filly said whenever a big order came up on his phone, he’d jump on it because he needed the money. He also didn’t want to do it anymore. “He’d tell me, ‘I really want a job so I can stop this delivery bullshit. It’s stressful and cars aren’t paying as much attention nowadays. I just want something stable’,” Filly said.

Some days he’d make deliveries just to make sure Callie would have food. “He just loved that dog so much,” Filly recalled.

Henderson also loved his bike. Filly said it was gifted to him by a stranger and that it had 20 years of life as a courier bike in San Francisco before it fell into Henderson’s hands. “He was just so excited to ride it all the time,” Filly shared. “He was always trying to get me motivated to ride with him, like, ‘Come on! Let’s go do laps around Ladds!'”. When Henderson moved in next door to Filly, they weren’t friends right away. But once they realized they both rode fixies, “That’s how we connected at first,” Filly said.

Henderson’s love or riding comes through in this LinkedIn profile he wrote (and that Filly urged me to share):

Self Employed, Partnered with Uber Eats Delivery. Delivering meals from various Restaurants within the Downtown Portland Area, via Fixed Gear Bicycle. I absolutely love doing deliveries on bicycle, not only do I get to deliver great food, I get to enjoy all the sights, and discover new locations to eat, and while I do it, I get to stay active and in great physical condition.

Providing great customer service, and delivering smiles to everyone I deliver to, plays a big role in my own mental health and wellness. Before this job, I had worked in customer services as well as the food service industry, which, unfortunately, did not leave much time to myself, and maintaining my own mental and physical health. Unfortunately, I had to resign from those positions because of the issues that were becoming more predominate, worsening my depression and physical health. I am now much happier with where I am at, and has made me more goal oriented and mission driven, in my pursuit to become a Peer Support specialist for military veterans with PTSD as well as other mental and physical disabilities.

Filly admired his friend’s riding skills. “He’s hyper-conscious of traffic and cars. He’s skilled as shit,” she said.

Now Filly plans to paint Henderson’s beloved bike white and place it as a ghost bike where it came to rest on that Tuesday night. There’s also a memorial gathering and ride planned for April 26th, the day Henderson would have turned 41.

But organizing those events will have to wait. Today, the emotions are still too raw. “We’re all feeling it. I’m feeling like I’m in that whirlwind still where I’m angry and sad.”

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— Henderson is the 17th person to be killed while using Portland roads so far this year. We had 12 fatal crashes by this same time last year. Stay tuned for more details about the memorial gathering and ride on April 26th.

UPDATE, 3/25: PPB have released an update. They say: “The preliminary investigation reveals that the cyclist entered the intersection against a red light and was struck by a sport utility vehicle (SUV) that had a green light. The driver has been cooperative. No arrests have been made or citations issued.”