stlouie_lipp wrote:What was he supposed to do? Get out of his car and get a beat down on the highway?
Seems like from the first frame the beat down was imminent. I'm not sure what happened before that made that the case. Speeding away from the initial scene was probably not the best idea, as the bikers were going to be able to chase him down no matter where he went, but if I were in that situation with dozens of bikers stopping around me (and my wife and child) on the highway, I'd probably panic and feel that the accelerator was my best friend like he did.
Also, I find it unsettling that in one of the biggest cities in the world a chase can go on for over five minutes on many prominent roads at high speeds without any police presence at all.
So is the initial accident at :30 when the one dummy slows down to look at the camera?
Hard to say how the bikers responded to the driver after that initial accident from the video but if they were aggressive at all then he did not do anything wrong.
New York's NBC 4 reports that an unnamed man seen punching the rear window of Alexian Lien's Range Rover turned himself in at a Queen's precinct earlier today. Police had already taken into custody 28-year-old Christopher Cruz, who they allege started the confrontation by swerving in front of Lien's vehicle and slamming on his brakes, causing Lien, who had his wife and child with him in the car, to nudge his back tire. That bump precipitated the real deterioration of the interaction.
Police claim that, after Lien pulled over following the fender bender, the motorcyclists began to damage his car, smashing it with their fists and helmets and slashing the tires, according to the New York Daily News. To escape, Lien slammed on his gas pedal, running over at least three motorcycles and a man, Edwin Mieses, who suffered two broken legs and is now in a medically-induced coma (Mieses' family say the 32-year-old has also been paralyzed from the waist down).
Cruz and other motorcyclists would embark on a high-speed chase to catch the fleeing Lien. That ended when the bikers surrounded the car, smashed out the driver's side window, pulled Lien from his seat, and assaulted him.