A cyclist struck a 59-year-old woman in Central Park on Thursday, September 18th. Jill Tarlov was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center where she later died from her injuries.
Police say that the cyclist, Jason Marshall, had swerved to avoid other pedestrians, hitting Tarlov. He sustained minor shoulder and hand injuries.
“He was yelling for her to get out of the way, but I don’t think she heard him,” a witness told the Post. Another witness added, “She went down pretty hard. The right side of her face looked very bad. There was blood all over her.”
Later, NYPD detective Ethan Mennen tweeted at bicycle enthusiast blogger Bike Snob: “Lemme guess you’re not gonna tweet about this: nyp.st/1swQcJ3.” A cursory look through Mennen’s Twitter feed reveals that he hasn’t mentioned a single other crime in a few months (including more than 100 deaths in car-related incidents so far this year), but he’s pretty stoked that “the dude from Fast and The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift still has a career.”
Bike Snob wasn’t aware of the incident at the time but shames the many assholes trying to make record times on speed cycles in the park, pointing out that, “if this is the same Jason Marshall’s Strava account then it would seem he makes a habit of trying to break his own personal speed records” and that, “the very worsts cyclists period–are the ones using the parks to launch their personal hour record attempts.”
Tarlov is the second pedestrian to be hit by a cyclist in Central Park this summer. In August, 75-year-old jogger Irving Schachter was killed after colliding with a cyclist in the park.
Bike Snob recommends the George Washington Bridge and the safer, sanctioned park races that happen almost weekly. Whether you’re on a bike or driving a car, you can be a dangerous moron, so think about the other eight million people around you. (Photo: Getty)
