BEAVERTON, Ore. (KOIN) – A motorcyclist sustained severe injuries early Monday morning when a blue Kia’s driver reportedly purposefully swerved into him, as captured by another motorist’s dashcam.
The hit-and-run occurred around 6:15 a.m. on Hwy 26 in Beaverton, Oregon. The Kia driver then fled the scene, with the Beaverton police suspecting the actions were deliberate.
The motorcyclist, a man in his 20s, slid 250 feet on his stomach as his clothes were torn by the road, described his mother, Patsy. The gear shifter pierced through his steel-toe boot, and his helmet fractured due to the crash’s impact.
“There’s no steel toe left,” said Patsy, who asked Nexstar’s KOIN to not use her last name. “There is a crack through it but the helmet saved his life.”
But the video only tells part of the story. Patsy said before the motorcycle and Kia come into the view of the dashcam, the driver tried to run her son off the road several times as he rode to work. Her son flipped off the Kia driver immediately before being slammed into and run off the road.
“The fact that somebody deliberately turned into my son and rammed him off the road is what makes me sick to my stomach,” Patsy told KOIN. “His actions could’ve killed my son.”
As the driver sped away, passersby rushed in. One woman even held her son’s head until help arrived, and for that Patsy is forever thankful.
“Super grateful for her staying with him until the ambulance got there because the (Kia) driver just drove off,” she said.
The driver, with only a vague description of being a white adult man between 30-40 with a black beard, remains at large.
“I’m asking him to do the right thing and turn yourself in,” Patsy said. “Turn yourself in.”
Her son is back home, bruised, scraped and on crutches. He faces a 3-month recovery, Patsy said. She is glad he’s home but very aware of how different it could have been.
“His actions could’ve taken my son’s life today,” she said. “And we’d be doing a completely different interview.”
