We hear about car-deer collisions all the time but last night’s bicycle-horse mishap is a new twist. Sergeant Dwayne Riche, of the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Department, says the accident happened about seven miles south of Council Bluffs on the Wabash Trail about 9:30 P.M.
“Deputies observed two females on horses that were consuming alcohol in this heavily-populated cycling area,” Riche says. “The two females were acting in a careless manner by riding their horses in and around all of the other people that had the bicycles there.”
The women were repeatedly told to move the horses or ride in a less populated area and they left, but returned. Later, deputies were dispatched nearby. “A female had fallen from her horse and had a broken leg,” he says.
When deputies arrived, they found a woman lying on the south side of the trail with an injury to her leg. A medical student, a passerby on a bike, was attending to her. Two women said they’d been thrown from their horses after getting bumped by two men on bicycles. Riche says deputies talked with both men.
“They both had lights on their bikes, front and rear, saw the two girls on the horses and they were the on north side of the trail,” he says. “When they were passing the horses, one horse got spooked, it jumped into the path of the riders and this is when the collision occurred.”
The woman with the leg injury was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for treatment. One of the cyclists had minor injuries and refused treatment. No charges were filed.
By Ric Hanson, KJAN, Atlantic