Last week, “Naked City” reported on apparent discrepancies between the Austin American-Statesman‘s coverage of a “melee” that occurred during the Sept. 28 Critical Mass bike ride and what several cyclists said actually happened. Riders Justin Davis and Ezra Teter disputed the Statesman‘s assertion that four cyclists beat on driver Mike Henderson at the corner of Cesar Chavez and Congress. They contend that Henderson started the “melee” by racing his Jeep Wrangler around traffic at the intersection of Second and Congress and “fishtailing” through the pack of cyclists, nearly running over several of them before hitting another car near the Congress Avenue bridge.
Davis and Teter said the Statesman reporter never asked the cyclists for their version of events. And, they add, the daily’s photographer likened the cyclists to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Krissy Morrow, who had been heading north on Congress when Henderson’s Wrangler hit her Honda Civic, recently contacted the Chronicle to shed additional light. From her perspective, the cyclists were acting in a hostile and aggressive manner toward Henderson. They “were blocking the traffic there. There was a green light and no one could go,” she says. “Somehow, [the cyclists] had decided it was their right to make a citizens arrest [of Henderson].”
Although Morrow didn’t see the action go down, she did notice that someone had slashed Henderson’s tires, and Henderson told her the cyclists spat in his car. Morrow says she was frightened by the cyclists’ hostility. “They came over to my car [after the accident] to ask if I was okay, and I said, ‘yes, no thanks to you,’ and rolled up my windows and locked my doors.”
Morrow does see eye-to-eye with the cyclists in their characterization of the Statesman reporter’s impoliteness. (John Bridges, the Statesman‘s acting metro editor, did not name the reporter who was at the scene, and told the Chronicle he did not know who the photographer was.) The reporter approached her while she was in her car and asked for her name. “I guess I paused too long,” she says. “He just turned around and said, ‘fine, I’ll just get it off of the police report then.’ He was just rude.”
This article appears in October 12 • 2001.