Toronto Police say they have arrested a man after he allegedly pushed a shopping cart into the bike lanes that struck an e-bike rider.
Police said it happened on Tuesday at around 10 a.m. on Danforth Avenue, near Monarch Park Avenue.
Multiple videos obtained by Global News appears to show a man walking on the sidewalk with an empty shopping cart. He lunges forward pushing the cart into the bike lanes, right into the path of man on an e-bike who falls to the ground, the video shows.
In the video, the man appears to look back and continue walking while the rider tries to get up.
The man on the e-bike sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to hospital, police said.
On Thursday, police announced officers made an arrest. A 47-year-old Toronto man has been charged with mischief endangering life, assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm.
Global News spoke to Holly Liddell who’s business is right on Danforth Avenue, she said she provided CCTV footage to police.
“My reaction was ‘oh no, not again. Not on the Danforth’ because it’s not the first time I’ve had police come in to take a look at video footage,” Liddell said. “This was the first time I’ve seen anything that violent but I wasn’t surprised by an incident on the Danforth, again.”
Dave Shellnutt, a personal injuring lawyer with a focus on cyclists who calls himself The Biking lawyer, posted about the incident on social media and told Global News “it’s really something of concern for us.”
“When you get injured in an incident like this, you have huge recovery costs — physio, time off work. Think about the psychological supports that are needed as well,” Shellnutt said.
“This is some pretty shocking, direct violence against perpetrated against someone seemingly just for riding a bike or an e-bike. This is a pattern of behaviour we’ve seen,” Shellnut said, adding “We’ve seen an uptick in anti-cyclist rhetoric since the Premier has sort of green-lighted his plan to remove bike lanes.”
Bike lane legislation in the court system
Ontario Premier Doug Ford passed legislation last year to rip out sections of bike lanes on several main roads in Toronto, citing gridlock issues.
Cycle groups took the province to court, seeking an injunction to stop the removal, and said the new law violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
A judge ordered the Ford government to pause bike lane removal work until a decision over the law’s constitutionality could be made.
At an unrelated press conference on Wednesday regarding bail reform, Ford went on a rant about judges and the judiciary system highlighting the case regarding bike lanes.
“We get elected, we move forward, and some judge — because of ideology — decides to put an injunction on bike lanes,” Ford said. “You’ve got to be kidding me; the system is broken.”
“We were democratically elected as a government and I always say, the legislature is supreme, meaning the people are supreme. When you get a mandate to do something, you can’t have judges constantly overruling the government.”
— With files from Global News’ Noor Ra’fat & Isaac Callan