Biker Left in Coma With Crushed Spine Was Trying to Help Friend When SUV Driver Ran Him Over in Highway Brawl, Says Wife
The distraught wife of Edwin Mieses Jr., 32, a pastor's son who was crippled by a scared SUV driver, Alexian Lien, 33, in a wild highway brawl in Manhattan, N.Y., says her husband was only trying to help a biker hit by Lien when he plowed into her husband and crushed his spine.
"He went to help someone," Dayana Mieses told WBZ-TV Tuesday morning of her husband who is said to be in a medically induced coma at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan.
It was his effort to help that has now left a trail of grieving family members. "All of his ribs are fractured," Mieses' mother, Yolanda Santiago, told WBZ, "his lungs are so badly bruised that he's still on a ventilator." She also told the Daily News that her son was "trying to hang on for dear life."
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A Go Fund Me campaign started on Tuesday, has almost reached a $2,000 fundraising goal intended to help the family with travelling costs to New York City.
"We have been asked by many to start a fund for his family that has had an unsurmountable amount of debt incurred by this act of violence. He lives in Massachusetts and the family has to travel back and forth to New York to be by his side during his coma," noted the campaign's organizer, Delilah Domenech.
That biker Mieses was trying help was Christopher Cruz, 28, who allegedly caused the initial fender bender that led to the highway brawl according to police.
On Wednesday morning, he was still awaiting arraignment in court after being charged with reckless endangerment, reckless driving, endangering the welfare of a child and other offenses.
Cruz is shown in a viral YouTube video of the incident swerving in front of Lien's Range Rover in which the Manhattan executive was transporting his 2-year-old daughter and his wife along the Henry Hudson Parkway. His actions caused Lien to bump his back tire setting off the series of events which ended after a four mile chase and Lien beaten in front of his wife and daughter.
A second biker, Allen Edwards, 42, also turned himself in to police on Tuesday night and is currently facing charges of reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and menacing according to the NYPD.
Mieses' family is calling for Lien to be charged for the assault on Edwin Mieses Jr., but a spokesperson from the NYPD's Office of the Deputy Commissioner Public Information (DCPI) says the investigation hadn't reached that point yet.
"The investigations are continuing. At this point the driver has not been officially charged," the spokesperson told The Christian Post on Wednesday. "We are working with the ADA's office."
