Your Louisville Slugger comment hits a little close to home. This article was emailed by our team director: (but 3min waves is just plain wrong, and you’re right about that)
From:******** Brad
Subject:**** Bike Haters
Hey Jonny:
Wise words that were uttered recently - “bike commuters are NOT f***ing mailboxes…”
Well, to refresh you memory - this is what the judge told the two fcks who had been terrorizing the community of Fort Collins, CO for hitting bike commuters from their Jeep with an aluminum baseball bat when he sentenced them last Friday. The two kids (now 18) agreed to accept a plea bargain and so I (along with their other dozen or so victims) was invited to make a statement at their sentencing hearing. And let me tell you, I made a f**ing statement.
While four other victims decided to show up and read pre-prepared statements, I spoke off the top of my head, from the heart, and from a very hostile part of my psyche. Hearing the statements of the others was intense, heartbreaking really. One young, petite woman (yeah, half of their victims were women) recalled laying in a pool of blood in the dark, deep facial and head lacerations, not knowing what the f*** had just happened to her, then crawling barefoot to the nearest home with porch light on to call 911. Crazy s***.
Anyway - here’s what the two little f****rs got, and let me say that I gave them one hell of a ‘stare-down’ the whole time they sat meekly, dumbly with their public defenders. Each got a Class 5 felony on their permanent record - “Menacing with a Deadly Weapon” for the guy swinging the bat and “Vehicular Assault” for the guy driving; two years in the CO Dept. of Corrections; responsibility for paying full restitutions to the victims (some had hospital stays for multiple months); and 5 years probation. I would have willingly given all that up for a good 5 minutes of alone time with each of the punks but that’s not how things work…
The last part about the 5 years probation is interesting…After hearing our statements, the judge raised what the original plea bargain listed as 2 years to 5 years. And for an 18 year old, that’s a fing eternity. They’ll be back in the shouse sometime during that period. The judge was a stud - really, I usually don’t show such respect for public legal figures, but this guy put down the law! He made the two little fs shake and cry with his 20 minute speech to them, saying things like “your behavior is totally unacceptable in a civilized society”…and the coolest thing he said was that throughout the legal hearings, the two boys never said “why” they did what they had done - driving around town hitting innocent bike commuters with a bat and then robbing many of those who fell off their rides and lay injured. Was it merely entertainment? They even ran one guy over! I was able to hold on (my heavily-loaded courier bag took the majority of the blow) and attempt to chase the frs down on the singlespeed. In my statement I reminded them of this, saying hey look, it’s me, they guy you hit and than drove-like-h**ll away from like fng sissies…when you had the vehicle, the bat, and the numbers on me. If I would have caught them, it may have been me on trial for attempted murder - imagine the headline, “man beats two youths senseless with steel singlespeed bicycle…” Anyway, this leads me to where I began this update, and that is what the judge ended his sentencing with, “people on bikes are NOT mailboxes to strike for your entertainment”. I never thought I’d hear those words quite in that order and context, but I did… Crazy s*…
