An off-duty Pima County Sheriff’s deputy was struck by a motorist on Tuesday evening.
A story on Tucson.com indicates the deputy Art Gutierrez was hit while riding his bike near Tanque Verde and Hougton Roads.
The deputy received serious, but non-life threatening issues.
Here’s a snippet from the article.
At about 5 p.m., Deputy Art Gutierrez was riding in the bike lane along East Tanque Verde Road near North Dusty Lane when a passenger car came up behind him and struck him, said Deputy Tom Peine, a spokesman for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
Gutierrez was thrown from his bike, and crashed into the windshield of the car before landing on the roof of the car, Peine said. His bike was dragged for several feet under the car. When the car came to a stop, Gutierrez fell to the ground.
Read the rest here.
I hope the deputy recovers quickly. This kind of thing is what keeps many people from riding bikes. Any idea if the driver was on a cell phone at the time?
I had the *dubious* honor to drive by while the area was still mobbed by police cars and flashing lights. Couldn’t look to see much, but the car (when stopped) was off the right side of the road and almost hitting a fence. At that time, the bike (I got a glimpse of the handlebars) was still on the asphalt, in the bike lane.
None of the news articles I found gave more information than “a young driver” and “stayed at the scene.”
@cwwees Which way was the bicyclist and the driver heading? (East or West).
tucson.com reports “no citations issued at the scene”
the links to the article did not work, but here it is again:
http://tucson.com/news/blogs/police-beat/deputy-hit-by-car-while-riding-his-bicycle/article_46b3ca7e-3eb1-11e4-b90c-33fb651c6bb2.html