12BX. BIKE HORROR
Kin: Dad run down as he & pals chased bigot
A beloved dad riding his bike on a Bronx bridge was fatally struck by an SUV, leaving his heartbroken family trying to fathom a Father’s Day without him.
Edward Marrow, 43, an avid cyclist and father of two, joined his pals for a bike ride to Orchard Beach on Saturday to commemorate the life of a friend who died years ago.
The group was pedaling home south over the Pelham Bridge’s walkway when the delightful day turned tragic around 5:10 p.m.
Marrow worked as an electrician for 20 years, providing for his wife and two kids the whole time. He had recently survived a leukemia diagnosis and was looking forward to a healthy future.
“We did everything together. I don’t know how I’m going to live and survive without him,” Marrow’s wife of 21 years, Nicole, told the Daily News. “Everyone says that they look up to him because he showed them how to be a dad — how to be a man in general.”
Police said Marrow, who lives in Soundview, lost control of his pedal-assist electric bicycle and careened into the roadway. A 28-year-old man driving a Jeep Wrangler slammed into him, causing major head injuries.
Marrow was taken to Jacobi Medical Center, but could not be saved.
The tragic sequence of events began when a white man riding a bike in the opposite direction over the bridge called the group of about six black cyclists “n—— rs,” according to Marrow’s uncle, Daryl Landy.
“In the heat of things, they turned around to go after the guy. They made a U-turn,” said Landy, who was not on the bike ride but says he was told what happened by several people who were there.
The victim and a friend biked off the walkway into the roadway y to p pursue the bigot when Marrow was struck, Landy said.
“The person driving the car, it really was an accident … the guy who hit him was innocent,” Landy said. But he could not say the same about the racist man he believes indirectly instigated the crash.
“For someone to feel emboldened, in the Bronx, enough to say something like that to a group of black men on a bike, it’s showing you where this country is going. Where it’s always been, actually,” said Landy.
“Yes, he could have just ignored it. But that’s not who he was. That’s not how any one of his friends would have been. Anyone would have had that visceral reaction.”
Marrow’s relatives say police told them he fell off his bike while trying to avoid a bottle cap, which the family found hard to believe because he was such an experienced cyclist who worked as a bike messenger in his youth.
While at Orchard Beach, Marrow made plans to spend Father’s Day eating crabs and drinking tequila with his own father, Edward Marrow Sr., during a phone call, said Landy.
“He said, ‘OK, Dad, I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going bike riding now,’ ” Landy said.
Marrow’s daughter Kori, 19, said she will miss her latenight chats with her father — and joining him on bike rides across the city.
“Just his character — I’d say my dad was indescribable,” she said. “Everything you could want in a dad and in a human.”
Marrow was the eighth cyclist to be killed in the city so far this year.
“He was the example to look at,” the uncle said, tears streaming down his face. “Anytime somebody would say something negative, like black men don’t do this or that, he just dispelled those. He just did what he had to do to support his family. He was never arrested, never in jail. This was a man doing what he was supposed to do.”