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Broken bike (CC licensed image by garryknight, www.flickr.com)Merseyside woman thrown from bike by rope strung across path
Two teenage girls have been arrested on suspicion of assault and “depositing a thing on a highway causing injury or danger to a user” after a 23-year-old teaching assistant was knocked from her bike when she hit a rope strung across a path.
Siobhan Delamare was riding home on Monday evening at about 7pm when she hit a rope that had been strung across Egremont Promenade.
The rope caught her across the throat, violently yanking her from her bike. She landed on the back of her head sustaining a concussion that kept her in hospital until this morning.
After being checked out of Arrowe Park hospital, Siobhan told the Liverpool Echo what had happened.
She said: “I was cycling along the promenade heading towards Seacombe, I do the same route five times a week.
“I didn't see anyone around, but heard laughter from somewhere and then saw something moving – that was when the rope was right on top of me.
“I felt myself being knocked to the floor, but don't remember anything after that until the paramedics arrived. It was all quite a blur, I must’ve been knocked unconscious.
“If I was going any faster I could’ve been killed.
“I usually do go quite fast because it’s a straight run and you can pick up a lot of speed.
“Luckily I wasn’t because it was dark. The guy who witnessed it said the impact was incredible, that I was flung backwards onto the top and then back of my head.”
Siobhan also sustained multiple cuts and bruises, especially on her throat.
Her mother Lynnette Cooper said: “Witnesses said the impact was horrific, the way she turned and fell. Of all the times, she didn’t have her helmet on.
“By the time we got there she was all strapped up, the ambulance crews treated her at the scene for more than half an hour.”
Siobhan was also treated for 40 minutes in an ambulance. She was discharged from hospital Tuesday morning, but readmitted after complaining of severe headaches and vomiting.
A CT scan revealed swelling on her brain at the point of impact but X-rays showed no bones were broken.
Siobhan said: “I feel disgusted. I was told the people involved videoed it as well. I’m there on the promenade all the time, I feel like it could’ve happened any time.
“It will take a lot to get back on a bike, and to do that route again.
“I’m worried in case it happens again.
“People need to think about the consequences, what could’ve happened and think before they do it. It was at head-height and it’s just so dangerous.
“I want to thank all those who were there on the night who helped me.
“The support from family and friends has been incredible, even people I don’t know have been in contact to send well-wishes.
“I’ve just got to count my lucky stars it wasn’t worse than it was.
“I’m aiming to bounce back but at the moment it’s very hard, and it will be for a while.”
Wallasey Neighbourhood Inspector Pete Kolokotroni said: “I’d like to reassure people that we take incidents such as this extremely seriously.
“It would appear that a rope from a life-ring was placed across the prom and it’s lucky the woman on her bicycle wasn’t more seriously injured.
“People who do things like this can't think about the possible consequences and such behaviour has no place in our community.”
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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28 comments
Those little s**ts are old enough to know better... charge them with GBH and take it from there.
Helmets should be mandatory to protect unsafe cyclists from head height ropes across cycle paths.
Jebus. Not again.
[think that one was ironic]
Oh, yes, that'll help stop people from being garroted by a steel wire strung across a path...
You do realise that people are of different heights, for starters? Or that the problem is actually having people set traps?
* I do actually agree that a helmet would help in this case, but only because it'll lessen the impact trauma of hitting the floor...!
Edit for spelling.
It's not part of a plot but it's certainly part of wider prejudices shown on the news and an social media. Racism can get you nicked these days so the bigots have turned to demonizing cyclists and various other people who are somehow "different" instead. Impressionable people such as kids, well it's going to rub off on them and they are going to get the idea that behavior such as this has peer approval from parents and relatives because it's what they are hearing and seeing at home. Cyclists this...cyclists that...not wearing helmets...they cause accidents blah blah blah. It's all happened before but it used to be ethnic minorities or gay people on the receiving end.
Its very hard to work out where "kids being idiots" ends and "general culture of hostility to an out-group" begins, in these things. I note that there was a case a little while ago where a _jogger_ suffered a serious injury due to this "prank". It might only be aimed at cyclists because they are an easier target than slow-moving pedestrians. Presumably putting cable across an A-road might feel a bit too serious!
There's a general tendency of kids to do anti-social things and its also against a backdrop of certain out-groups being considered acceptable targets. Its really hard to know how much each contributes to any given case.
"Socially dysfunctional times?" Moronic behaviour more like!
Yes they are kids but this wasn't "assault", it was attempted murder.
This sort of offence should be treated similarly to cretins who throw concrete off motorway bridges.
Do 'um for GBH like they should be for starters, they'll soon regret their actions come the time they've left school and can't step into the careers they're after because they screwed it up.
Take your common sense elsewhere samuri, we have no need for that here !
This is two silly little girls who carried out actions they thought would be funny without considering the implications.
Nothing more. This is not a global attack on cyclists or worthy of re-introducing the death penalty, simply immature idiots who have not enough experience to contemplate the outcome of some hastily considered , ill-advised pranks.
Clearly this was an incredibly dangerous thing to do and I am glad this lady has no permanent damage but lets not blow this up beyond proportion.
As much as i would like to hope it was a silly prank booby traping trails is not unheard of, I have seen it myself. It was a matter of time before it moved to cycle paths difference is I am often wearing more armor on the trails than on the cycle paths.
https://www.google.com/search?q=rope+on+trails#q=booby+trap+mtb+trails
Dac
The awful picture of the yellow bike painted on a cracked road returns to inform us of more cycling horror.
It' simply reflects that some folk do not regard cyclists as people. The kids probably learn such contempt for cyclists by being passengers in there parents cars.
The kids had heard it was Pat McQuaid that was coming.
"Depositing..." WHAT!?
This is an intentional assault, not having your ladder fall off the roof rack and causing an accident!
Wow, it's like reading the Daily Mail, or listening to Nigel Farage, reading the comments on here.
You do wonder what sort of world we live in when 13 and 15 year old girls would do such a thing as a "prank". Maybe there was more of a malicious intent behind it? Shocking behaviour either way.
Oh, and let's not turn this into yet another bloody helmet debate. You either choose to wear one or you don't. Simple as that.
Difficult to come up with coherent response to this, without chainsaws, duct tape and several half empty bottles of tequila anyway.
Hoping Siobhan's up and at 'em, and maybe back in the saddle soon.
The parents of those kids need punched in the face. Daily. And the kids taken away to foster parents who can instil some semblance of humanity in them. Shocking brainless behaviour that was.
Story is obviously false. She wasn't wearing a helmet, therefore can't have survived - everyone knows that.
No, I don't care that this is hobby-horse insertion. If you find it annoying, you point this out as obvious refutation to the people who think every impact is conclusive proof that a helmet saved a life.
On the actual story, not sure why we need a "depositing things on the highway offence". Battery covers it, surely? I'm pretty certain non-highway-related cases where someone has desired harm, but not against one specific person, and been prosecuted for (ABH?) exist.
Unfortunately this is a sign of the socially dysfunctional times. There's a "game" going around in the US where teens to 20-somethings single out a random stranger and hit them as hard as they can with the goal of knocking them out with a single hit. People have been hospitalized and even killed.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-02-05/news/chi-2nd-teen-charged-...
It's sad when _Lord of the Flies_ is tamer than the news.
Erm, no, there's no such trend.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/26/knockout-game-myth/...
The Chicago Tribune's writer sexed up that story by leveraging an urban myth, because a simple violent robbery isn't sensational in the least.
Is that supposed to be ironic or just stupid?
Anyway, IANAL but I wonder how is this not GBH or even GBH with intent?
*coughjustacyclistcough*?
String the culprits up who did this, hang them till they are dead. Taste of their own medicine.
A 13 year old and a 15 year old. Yes, definitely gallows fodder.