Oh well…

Sometimes biking is a crime.

May 19, 2007
Bus Kills Man on Bicycle After Robbery
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR and MATTHEW SWEENEY
New York Times

A thief was killed by a city bus in the South Bronx yesterday as he fled across a busy intersection on a bicycle after stealing a gold chain from a jewelry store, the police said.

The man, who was not identified, was struck by the bus just before 4 p.m. near the intersection of East 153rd Street and Melrose Avenue in Melrose, the police said. Witnesses said the man had just snatched a $2,000 chain from the Dreams jewelry store at 651 Elton Avenue and was trying to elude a shop employee when — about a block away — he pedaled into the path of an articulated express Bronx 2 bus.

The bus was traveling at a high rate of speed, sending the man and his bike clear across the street, the police and witnesses said.

“It was a real heavy impact,” said Marilyn VonSaint, who was waiting for another bus nearby at the time of the accident. “The bus smacked him head-on, and he went flying. It was pretty bad. There was blood all over the street.”

The man, who was in his 40s, was taken to Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center with fatal head injuries, the police said. They said the driver of the bus was in shock and was also taken to Lincoln, along with five passengers who complained of injuries.

The owner of the shop, Lakhwinder Singh, said the thief showed up when only one employee was on duty and asked to see a three-inch 14-karat cross on a Cuban-link gold chain. When the employee refused to hand him the chain, the man yanked it through a glass partition and ran out of the shop, Mr. Singh said.

“He took it from here, and he was hit right over there,” Mr. Singh said last night as he stood outside the shop, pointing to the intersection a block away. “He lost his life for $2,000. He’d sell it for maybe only two or three hundred. That makes no sense.”

Mr. Singh said that in all the commotion, the chain and cross apparently disappeared. “The cops said we didn’t find nothing,” he said. “Where’s the cross? I don’t believe it.”