DAYTONA BEACH — For one man reveling Friday in the first day of Bike Week, his night ended with a leg injury, an arrest that carried multiple charges and a starring role in a Volusia County Sheriff’s Office chase video posted on Twitter and Facebook.
A post attached to the three-minute video says, “Here’s a good way to get yourself killed.” The dash camera video shows a fleeing motorcyclist turning his head to look back toward a pursuing deputy and flipping him off before the biker speeds past a red light and gets hit by a pickup truck coming though the intersection.
The man blowing through the red light, Joshua Richardson, survived the crash and briefly ran before being apprehended, according to what deputies said on the video.
The pickup truck driver immediately stopped. It’s not clear if that driver or any of the passengers in the vehicle were injured.
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Sometime after midnight Friday, Richardson and a half-dozen other motorcyclists were popping wheelies on Old Dixie Highway, deputies say. Deputy Jacob Bissonnette attempted a traffic stop on the pack riding through the darkness, but the group accelerated.
They fled at high speed and continued driving recklessly, passing vehicles across solid double lines, deputies said.
As they were approaching North Beach Street and West Granada Boulevard, the group ignored a red light and continued fleeing from deputies. Richardson was at the front of pack, and right after he was knocked off of his motorcycle, his friends are shown in Bissonnette’s dash camera video driving around the stopped patrol car and zipping through the intersection while the light remained red.
‘Stop and figure out why we’re chasing you’
Richardson was quickly apprehended by deputies heading toward the intersection that Bissonnette had been talking to on his radio.
“I’m hurt,” Richardson said as he was laying on the ground and deputies were attempting to handcuff him.
“Idiot,” one of the deputies says, to which Richardson responds, “I know.”
On body camera video, Richardson is seen writhing on the ground and telling deputies how much pain he’s in. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and some sort of dark mark on his right thigh can be seen in the video.
“You know how your leg doesn’t get hurt?” one of the deputies standing over him asks. “You don’t run from the cops and crash your bike.”
“Do you think this is funny?” Richardson asks.
“No, I don’t think it’s funny. It’s incredibly stupid,” one of the deputies responds.
“We’re being chased by 12 cops in the middle of nowhere. What am I supposed to do?” Richardson queried.
“Stop and figure out why we’re chasing you,” one of the deputies said.
Richardson was charged with fleeing or attempting to elude law enforcement, resisting without violence and leaving the scene of a crash. He’s also receiving traffic citations for failure to stop at a red light and passing in a no-passing zone. He was released Saturday on $6,000 bond, records show.
You can reach Eileen at [email protected]
