Friday, August 24, 2012

81-YEAR-OLD TOYOTA DRIVER CHASED BICYCLIST ONTO GOLF COURSE AND RAN HIM DOWN

Bob Walsh responded to this story by saying, “I always knew that bicycling was bad for the health.”

SANTA ROSA MAN, 81, JAILED IN ROAD RAGE ATTACK
By Demian Bulwa

San Francisco Chronicle
August 18, 2012

SANTA ROSA -- An 81-year-old motorist is behind bars in Santa Rosa after police said he yelled at a bicyclist who pedaled through his wine country retirement village, then used his Toyota sedan to chase the rider onto a golf course and run him down.

Harry Edward Smith was arrested Saturday afternoon on suspicion of assault and battery, three days after the alleged road rage attack on 47-year-old cyclist Toraj Soltani at Oakmont Village near Kenwood.

The case was cracked, police said, when another alleged victim of Smith called detectives Saturday. Rose Zoia, an attorney and avid cyclist, recounted an October encounter with a white-haired motorist who yelled that she was too young to be rolling through Oakmont.

Zoia, police officials said, tried to talk to the man as an "ambassador of good will for the cycling community," but he continued to yell. She reported the run-in, but nothing came of the case because a crime hadn't occurred.

Still, she kept the man's license number, and on Saturday morning she picked Smith out of a photo lineup.

By 12:30 p.m., Smith and his gold 1997 Toyota Avalon Sedan were in police custody. Smith was jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail, and investigators said they found damage to his passenger side mirror, plus debris from the golf course stuck to the sedan's undercarriage.

Soltani, a deli owner who had to have plate inserted into his broken left wrist, told the Press Democrat newspaper that his attacker had initially honked and yelled at him for riding without his hands on the handlebars. He said he yelled back after the motorist veered right and bumped him.

Soltani said he thought he would be safe after turning onto a cart path, only to be struck from behind.

"I don't think," Soltani said, "that you can ever make sense of something like this."

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