I had been avoiding my ex for eleven months. I changed my phone number, moved to a different county, and secured a protective order that prevented him from coming near me. But none of that helped on a Tuesday night at a Shell gas station off Route 9. As I stood at the pump with $40 displayed, I caught a whiff of his cologne before seeing him. He whispered to me, questioning if I thought a piece of paper could keep him away. His grip on my arm was so tight that I could feel bruises starting to form. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t make a sound. Years of marriage had conditioned me to go silent when he became aggressive.
Suddenly, I heard someone approaching from behind. An older man, possibly around 65, with a long gray beard and a leather vest covered in patches, was at the next pump filling up his black Harley motorcycle. I hadn’t noticed him until then. He calmly told my ex to let me go. My ex laughed and dismissed him, but he never got to finish his sentence. The older man struck him with one punch, knocking him down. He then stood over my ex, pulled a red cloth from his back pocket, and cleaned his knuckles as if checking the oil on his bike.
I felt weak and sat down on the curb by the ice machine. The biker asked if I was hurt. I shook my head, but I was shaking so much that my teeth chattered. The police arrived eight minutes later. One officer placed my ex in handcuffs while another took the biker’s ID to record his statement. After reading the name on the ID, the younger officer looked at me with a puzzled expression, as if something was not right.
In another incident, the biker also witnessed my ex grabbing my hair while I was at a gas station with my daughter, Lily, in the car. I had left my ex four months earlier after an incident where he nearly hit me with his fist. He had been harassing me with calls since then, and I thought he had finally stopped. However, one Sunday morning, at a Marathon station, he blocked my car and attacked me, pulling my hair and hitting my head against the pump while Lily screamed in the back seat.
The biker, who appeared to be in his sixties with an Army tattoo and reading glasses on his vest, quickly intervened. He didn’t shout or give any warnings. He simply hit my ex once on the side of the head, causing him to collapse. Then, the biker walked over to my car, knelt by the window so Lily could see him, and assured her that I was safe. She stopped crying and pressed her tiny hand against the glass over his.
A little later, my ex started groaning on the ground. As he turned over and saw the biker, all the color drained from his face. I had never seen him look scared before.
What do you think about the actions of the biker in these situations?
Sources:
Source: bikersbyte.com, by David Hog