An elderly pedestrian and a 20-year-old dirt-bike rider were injured last night when a police cruiser allegedly hit the vehicle during a chase.
The younger man was riding a Honda CRF at around 5:30 p.m. when the pursuing cruiser bumped it, causing it to flip and hit a 77-year-old man waiting to cross Boston Road near Thwaites Place in Pelham Gardens, according to multiple witnesses.
A group of about of 30 or 40 people on bikes and four-wheelers were heading toward Pelham Parkway when the incident occurred.
“One cop car bumped him twice,” a witness said. “The bike flipped over and took out the old man.”
But a law-enforcement source contradicted witness accounts, saying that there was no contact and that the cruiser was making a U-turn when the bike rider tried to flee and spun out of control.
Both the elderly man and the dirt-bike rider were recovering in Jacobi Medical Center in The Bronx last night.
The rider was in custody, but had not been charged.
The accident occurred a day after video was released of a similar incident last August when a police cruiser slammed into two men riding a dirt bike in the Hunts Point section of The Bronx.