Two bikers who allegedly terrorized and beat a driver during a wild chase on the West Side Highway have been arrested — and one of the motorcyclists injured in the chaos may be paralyzed for life.
One of the perps, Christopher Cruz, 28, of Passaic, NJ, was charged with reckless endangerment, reckless driving, endangering the welfare of a child and menacing in the attack on Alexian Lien.
Cruz was the one who allegedly swerved his bike in front of Lien as he and other rowdy cyclists roared up the West Side Highway around 1:30 p.m., causing the dad’s SUV to bump into his ride.
Another suspect, Allen Edwards, smashed in Lien’s rear driver’s side window with his helmet, sources said.
He surrendered to the 113th Precinct in South Jamaica, Queens, on Tuesday morning, sources said. He has not yet been charged.
Police are still hunting a third suspect, who smashed in Lien’s driver’s side window. They believe he may also be the one who yanked Lien out of his bashed-in car after a wild chase, starting the vicious beating of the dad.
The initial incident and chase was caught on videotape by a helmet camera by one of the bikers — who later sickeningly posted it on YouTube.
Early on in the fray, as Lien initially sped off to try to escape the menacing pack, he ran over 26-year-old biker Jeremiah Mieses of Lawrence, Mass., sources said.
Law-enforcement sources told The Post that Mieses’ spine was crushed and that he may now be a paraplegic.
“He was intubated and placed on a respirator last night in preparation or surgery. He couldn’t talk,” one source said.
Mieses’s family posted a photo on the Internet of a badly bruised and cut Mieses hooked up to machines in the hospital.
“My son just got out of surgery. Now we have to contend with his situation that he will never walk again,” Meises’s dad, the Rev. Edwin Mieses, wrote on Facebook.
Jeremiah Mieses’s wife told WBZ-TV in Boston that her husband had gotten off his bike to help a pal who’d been knocked over.
“He went to help someone,” she said.
Cruz remained at the scene in Harlem and was not among 20 to 30 bikers who followed the family up the West Side Highway onto West 178th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Washington Heights.
As Lein fled, the bikers raced after him.
At one point, they forced his vehicle to the side of the road, where the bikers slashed the father’s tires while one opened the driver’s door and tried to pull the terrified dad out, sources said.
But Lien managed to speed off again, with the bikers in pursuit.
They finally caught up with him again in Washington Heights, where he was dragged out of his car and beaten in front of his family.
The Range Rover came to a stop there because of heavy traffic and its deflated tires, which had previously been slashed by the bikers.
Lien went to the hospital for stitches on his face and chest. The dad, who also suffered two black eyes, was treated and released.
The video footage stops before Lien was attacked.
A police source said many of the bikers who cops have spoken to so far haven’t been any help in their probe.
“The motorcyclists are being uncooperative, those that have been interviewed. … They’re full of crap. They’re saying they didn’t see anything. They’re saying, ‘I was just standing there.’ It’s a joke.
They’re tracking down the others. They went out to Brooklyn last night to look for a third guy.”
Cruz was briefly hospitalized and released for minor injuries, including lower back pain, authorities said.