Witness tells of horror he witnessed as truck rams into bike race on Saturday
PHOENIX >> Bicyclist Tony Quinones had only just shaken hands with a fellow cyclist and wished him good luck in this weekend’s community race in an Arizona mountain town when a truck sped into a crowd of bike riders about six minutes into the race.
Suddenly, Quinones said in an interview Sunday, he was “watching bodies going on top of the hood, bodies going to the left, bodies going to the right.”
The sounds of breaking and smashing as the truck plowed through the cyclists on Saturday was quickly replaced by their groans of pain — including those of the cyclist Quinones had just met.
Authorities in the small city of Show Low said the unidentified 35-year-old male suspect fled the crash scene in the pickup and was shot by officers a short time later. Six riders were hospitalized in critical condition
and the suspect was in critical but stable condition.
Quinones, 55, said the man he had met was a fellow New Mexican and that blood was flowing from his head and his nose.
“He’s got a compound fracture, and I’m just saying, ‘Hey man keep breathing, keep breathing. Help’s on its way. Hey man, you’re going to be OK.’” Quinones
said. “I mean, that’s just insane. It’s not just one. There’s like six, seven, eight other guys like who are all around doing the same thing.”
Authorities were trying to determine why the man driving the truck rammed into the group of cyclists participating in the annual 58-mile (93-kilometer) Bike the Bluff race that drew hundreds of participants. He was shot by police nearby outside a hardware store in Show Low, which is about a three-hour drive northeast of Phoenix.
“We don’t know the motivation,” said Show Low city spokeswoman Grace Payne.
Quinones said some cyclists wondered at first whether the driver of the truck had fallen asleep at the wheel. But Quinones said he saw the man accelerate toward the cyclists.
“He went right at us,” he said.
Of the six cyclists hospitalized, four were in critical condition and the two others were in critical but stable condition as of Saturday. One was flown for treatment to a hospital near Phoenix.
Witnesses said helmets, shoes and crumpled and broken bicycles were strewn across the street after the crash, and a tire was wedged into the grill of the truck that rammed the cyclists at about 7:25 a.m. in downtown Show Low. The
truck had damage to its top.