As you know, there's a lot of tension and conflict between motorists and cyclists on the scenic, hilly roads outside San Antonio -- a rural area about 45 miles northeast of Tampa. Pasco County sheriff's deputies have been monitoring bicyclist groups to make sure cyclists pedal to the letter of the traffic law, stopping at every stop sign and staying to the right.
But Sandy Pacheco Pehl reports to me and also on Facebook about a dangerous incident caused by a pickup driver who threatened her cyclist group with violence and s gun recently.
According to Sandy, a pickup truck travelling faster than the speed limit stopped in front of the cyclists almost causing the group to crash into him.
"The driver and his friend get out of the truck and get in our faces yelling at us and carrying on completely blocking the road so we couldn't go around. When we didn't back down, the one guy informed us he had guns in the truck and he wasn't afraid to use on us," Sandy said.
Sandy explained further that this truck had multiple firefighter stickers on it. And she got a tag number.
Sandy also notes that she got a call from cyclist Joel Chavez and he told her the guy did, in fact, have a gun and threatended to use it and he wants to press charges.
The passenger in the pickup truck took the gun from the driver/gun owner, Sandy said.
Sandy said she called two deputies, and they are trying to find the driver as the truck is registered to a company not a person.
Sandy explains there are several witnesses.
"Our sport is so dangerous as it is and after John got stabbed (many of us are friends with him, myself included) I am not just gonna sit and let this kind of thing happen," Sandy says.
4 comments:
This is terrible... please keep us up to date about this story...
I hope someone gets some cold, hard jail-time over this...
Too bad they fail to tell you, they attempted to pepper sprayed the guy before he threatened to use his gun.
Its funny how they preach bicycle safety and yet they still take up the whole road and piss off motorist.
Anyonmous:You have to take middle lane in certain circumstantes. Unless you enjoy riding in the dirt beside the road, if you're not assertive enough, you'll have SUV's/Pick-ups and other more dangerous vehicles passing you when it's not safe. I've been passed with about a half a foot clearence. It's not fun. Enough is enough.
The logic of this article confuses me. The truck driver stopped in front of the group. Which means that the bicyclers were stretched across both lanes. The police are trusting a biased person who has already failed to include the fact that they tried to pepper spray him before he threatened to get a gun to determine the driver's speed. Not only that but, technically since the truck driver was being threatened with pepper spray he would be legally able to use his gun under the Florida Stand Your Ground Law. This article's logic is twisted and turned to make it the driver's fault and i find that annoying. They look over the obvious facts of the bicyclers attack on the driver and the fact that they were spread across the road FORCING him to stop and instead focus on the truck driver's threat to legally use his firearm on the bicyclers.
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