nothin Dirt-Bike Season Claims 1st Casualty | New Haven Independent

Dirt-Bike Season Claims 1st Casualty

Father Jim Manship Photo

Leron Stone riding in Fair Haven.

(Advisory: Above video includes disturbing footage.)

Doctors worked on reconstructing the face of a 24-year-old veteran of New Haven’s bike life” Thursday as he struggles to regain brain function and a normal life after crashing on Grand Avenue — at the onset of another summer of two-wheeled chaos that has neighbors clamoring for help from the cops.

Leron Stone, who remains in Yale-New Haven Hospital two weeks after the crash, has a year of operations ahead of him,” said mother Ruth Stone. He will have permanent damage; they just don’t know how much permanent damage.

He’s talking to me. He’s talking like he’s trapped in the past.”

For years Leron Stone played an active role in New Haven’s unofficial bike life” network of BMX, dirtbike, ATV, and motorcycle riders who perform daredevil stunts amid traffic and contact each other on social media for mass rides on city streets. A number of those incidents led to Stone being arrested. (Click here to read about a confrontation he had with Fair Haven priest Jim Manship.)

He won’t be on a bike anytime soon following the June 10 crash. With a black T‑shirt covering his face, Stone was riding a blue and white dirt bike along with two motorcyclists heading westbound on Grand Avenue by Ferry Street at 4:22 p.m. when he made a U‑turn, accelerated, and rode east directly into oncoming traffic, according to a report by police Officer Martin Feliciano, who wrote that he had been stopped at a red light at the time.

Feliciano wrote that he pulled over to the shoulder of Grand near Atwater Street to prevent the dirt-bike operator from further driving recklessly due to the presence of my police cruiser.”

At that point, as shown in the video of the incident (at the top of this story), a driver of a red Nissan Sentra began to turn left into a parking lot on Grand Avenue. And Stone rode right into the Sentra’s side fender.

Stone, who wasn’t wearing a helmet, was thrown from the bike into a parked car. His skull was fractured and he bled from the head. A crowd gathered. Stone, unable to speak, was rushed to Yale-New Haven Hospital with life-threatening brain injuries. Doctors began what would become a series of operations.

Meanwhile, a woman named Kesha Nicholas approached an officer on the scene to report that she had seen the dirt-bike rider and the two motorcyclists five minutes before on Middletown Avenue heading toward Ferry Street. The dirt-bike rider’s reckless” driving scared her, so she followed him to the scene of the eventual crash.

Fear Struck

Long Wharf ftill from a New Haven “bike life” video.

She’s not the only scared one. Dirt-bike riders and other bike life daredevils have returned en masse to New Haven’s streets this month, sometimes in packs, sometimes solo or in small groups. They travel as fast as 60 miles per hour with or against traffic on main thoroughfares and residential streets, performing wheelies and burnouts (hitting just the front brake while the back tire spins).

Neighbors have deluged cops with pleas for help, as they have in summers past. Police Chief Anthony Campbell sat down recently with eight neighbors from Edgewood, who have been calling in complaints as 30 to 40 riders have shown up at Edgewood Park on recent weekends and torn up the surrounding streets. Campbell promised them that members of his intelligence unit and other officers are working with West Haven cops and other law enforcement agencies to build cases against riders.

In an interview with the Independent, Campbell called Stone’s crash one of the most horrific accidents we’ve ever seen.”

Kids were out there and saw this. We had to get Yale Child Study out there,” he said.

The bike life antics are traumatizing people,” he said. And we don’t want these kids dying. We don’t want them broken up. There’s got to be a better way.”

Two dirt-bike riders died in New Haven last year while riding in packs, both hitting light poles, according to the police.

When these guys come speeding down at 60 miles an hour without helmets, we pull the kids off the sidewalk,” said former Edgewood Alder Edward Zelinsky, a law professor who lives on the Boulevard and helped organize the meeting with the chief. You’ve got to be concerned. If one of them loses control, they’re going to hit someone.

It is an assault on the urban environment. And someone is going to get killed by one of these bikers at some point.”

You have 50 – 60 bikers. They ride on the sidewalk. They cover their faces. They scare people,” said current Edgewood Alder Evette Hamilton, who said she’s working with the city on a solution. The bikers taunt the police. They cover their faces. They come up, give the finger, and speed off.”

Meanwhile, a debate has resurfaced in town about how best to address the problem. Should cops chase? Not chase? (The current policy forbids chases.) Work with the young riders to find them safe off-road places to ride? Crack down on them with intensive police investigative work aided by citizens’ eyes and ears?

Leron Stone’s brush with death offered a reminder that lives are at stake on both sides: the general public’s and the riders’ themselves.

Freedom

Augie Gray: You can feel like a rock star.

Few people understand that better than G, a 20-year-old man who grew up in Newhallville. He used to ride dirt bikes, too. Until he woke up in Yale-New Haven Hospital one day two years ago with tubes attached to his body.

He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. His mother, who was by his side, explained that he had just spent four days in a coma.

Four days earlier, on May 31, 2015, he too had been riding a dirt bike, at night, on Grand Avenue. He had just bought the bike, he said. From what he could piece together from people later, he said he had pulled around a stopped car and crashed into another.

He had severe head injuries. After he awoke from the coma, it took another five days for him to learn to breathe without the tubes.

He also learned a lesson, he said: Take your time. I don’t rush no more. I don’t let what nobody else says affect me no more.”

He’d loved riding dirt bikes since he was eight years old, he said. He spoke of the free feeling a rider gets. The thrill of the fastness. Switching gears, going through the stages. I don’t worry about nothing. I think about riding, having fun.”

But now he has stopped riding, he said. He got a good night-shift job at Yale. During daylight waking hours, he can be found at a Grand Avenue repair shop learning how to fix cars — another one of his passions. He said he dreams of opening his own shop. He wants to wait until then to have his name or photograph in the media, he said. I don’t want to be known for crashing a bike.”

Bike life starts off like this: with BMX [bicycles]. Kids on mountain bikes doing wheelies. Then they get their hands on a dirt bike. It’s really addictive,” reflected Augie Gray, a 32-year-old chronicler of the local bike life scene who has made videos of dirt-biker and motorcycle events” up and down the East Coast.

Riders in the life contact him through social media when they organize a wildcat ride so he can bring his camera, ride along, and memorialize their tricks. Which Gray does. He has developed a following for his videos; he knows how to handle a GoPro on the fly, when to zoom in and out, when to clip a scene, what Metallica song to slap in the background. He chose Moth into Flame” to accompany the above video he shot in the Annex last year of over 200 bikers going crazy on the streets of New Haven.”

It gets really addictive,” Gray observed. It’s not just because they’re punks. It’s a lifestyle. We’re not out trying to hurt other people. People think we don’t know [the danger]. Somebody can die doing this shit!”

He compared the lure to that of skydiving: You’re not guaranteed that shit is not going to open. [The rider] likes the thrill. And when everyone gives him credit, it’s like a concert, and you’re the show, bro.”

As Gray’s videos make clear — like the defiant photos riders like Stone post on their Facebook pages — the bike lifers aren’t hiding. The cops know they’re there. The question is how to stop them.

New Londoner Blowout

One way: Get lucky. The way Officer Kyle Listro did this past Sunday afternoon.

Listro was on duty driving east on Edgewood Avenue at 2:42 p.m. when approximately 20 – 30 dirt bikes, and quads (ATVs)” rode by him, he wrote in a subsequent report. It didn’t matter that they were passing a marked police cruiser; the riders started riding wheelies” and swerving between cars [with] total disregard for any traffic laws.”

Riders know that New Haven has a policy against cops chasing the riders. They sometimes taunt the cops, speeding past them and doing tricks in defiance of the law.

Listro continued driving as the pack zoomed past. He noticed a Yamaha YZF450 dirt bike, which is designed for just one rider and no passengers, in the back of the pack. A driver and a passenger sat on the seat. The driver continue[d] to swerve in and out of traffic towards Crown St. nearly causing multiple accidents,” Listro wrote.

Since it was Father’s Day, a lot of people were out walking in the busy area near Park and Crown when Listro pulled up to the intersection. He also saw the dirt bike there. It had stalled.

The driver saw Listro, too.

He looked back toward me and when he observed me approaching him, he repeatedly tried to restart the engine using the dirt bike’s kick starter to avoid being caught,” Listro wrote. At this time I positioned my police vehicle in front of [him] to prevent him from fleeing.” Listro arrested the driver on reckless driving charges.

The cops had the Yamaha 450 towed to the police garage on Sherman Parkway. The driver said he’d just bought the dirt bike for $9,000 and hadn’t registered or insured it. It turned out he also had a suspended driver’s license. The passenger told another officer, Jeff Suchy, that the group of riders live in the New London area; they’d organized the ride to go through New Haven.

Cut To The Chase

Luck like Listro’s comes rarely. When the police have made arrests during past dirt bike seasons, they generally painstakingly build cases: They’ll collect information about dangerous riders from citizens who take photos or offer descriptions, or who tell them where bikes are stored. Officers do other fact-gathering, too.

Overseeing the strategy is intelligence unit chief Sgt. Karl Jacobsen. We have to be covert,” he said. We have to get arrest warrants and search warrants to seize the bikes down the road when it’s not an unsafe situation for the public and the riders.”

In the past, the cops have worked with state police to shut down highways when riders are passing through multiple jurisdictions. Often the New Haven cops work with East Haven, North Haven, and West Haven cops on cases. The riders don’t have the boundaries that we do,” Jacobsen said.

Some officers have argued over the years that they should be able to chase riders to prevent lawlessness. Police brass decided that the chases are too dangerous — to the public, the cops, and riders. Chases escalate situations, leading to faster and more reckless driving, increasing the chances that someone will die or get hurt.

Chief Campbell said he subscribes to the no-chase policy and argument. He also said that doesn’t excuse the cops from doubling down on making cases. He said stopping illegal, dangerous bike life antics will be a department priority this summer.

We take an oath to preserve life,” Campbell said. He cited Leron Stone’s brush with death: This young man almost lost his life. He’s going to have reconstructive surgery for months because of this. It’s one of the reasons we do not pursue. It winds up not only injuring the rider. It jeopardizes the officer. It jeopardizes the public.”

Edgewood’s Ed Zelinsky said he disagrees with the no-chase policy. He argued that in the long run, it increases dangerous dirt-bike and ATV activity because it sends a message to riders that they can get away with it. These young men think that there’s nothing constraining them. I’m convinced that their behavior is going to become increasingly outlandish. That is going to have more consequences,” Zelinsky said.

That said, Zelinsky came away from the meeting with Campbell and other top brass reassured” and impressed” with their commitment to building cases against the offenders. Neighbors told the top cops about calling in reports about the dangerous activity only to be told by dispatchers that the department doesn’t take those reports. Campbell said that’s absolutely wrong, that the department wants those calls. He gave the neighbors his personal phone number to call in case that happens again.

A photo Leron Stone posted on his Facebook page.

Riders and their advocates argued that the city should make safe spots available for dirt bikes and ATVs.

If they had a field where people are allowed to ride, there’d be no problems,” G. argued.

Leron Stone’s mom promised to push for the creation of such an area. Even though her son may never ride again, plenty of others will continue, she said.

These boys have nowhere to go. My boy’s been riding four wheelers and dirt bikes since he was 8‑years-old. When he started riding dirt bikes, they said they were giving property for the boys to ride. They haven’t given any property. Give us the dirt. Give us the property. So these boys can do what they want.

I promised to get this for my baby. They deserve it. Why should they have to go to another town?”

Augie Gray acknowledged that some riders, who have had tough lives and may be involved in other criminal activity, get a thrill out of breaking the rules, of getting past the cops. Still, he argued, the cops could work with organizers of bike life events like a group working out of the Hole in the Wall club on Forbes Avenue, which brought the 50 riders to streets along the harbor for the ride he video recorded last fall.

Police spokesman Officer David Hartman scoffed at the give-them-a-space-to-ride suggestion as an excuse for intentional criminal acts that endanger the public.

This is not about a safe place to ride,” he argued. If I like to ride a horse on Whalley Avenue, I don’t get to do that either. You can’t do that in a city.”

Cities don’t have that kind of space, Hartman said. He cited his experience of having riders pass him and give him the finger as they defy the rules.
The thrill is breaking the rules,” he said. The thrill is showing off.”

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