Mess Media, November 11, 2009
On August 31, 2009, former attorney general of Ontario, Michael Bryant, in a fit of road rage intentionally slammed his car into cyclist Darcy Allan Sheppard after Sheppard passed his car and pulled to a stop in front of Bryant at a red light in a construction zone.
After Sheppard grabbed on to Bryant’s car, Bryant sped away on the wrong side of the road, and mounted the curb, deliberately smashing Sheppard into a mailbox, fire hydrant and other fixed obstacles, eventually killing him.
Since the attack, many people in the media that knew Michael Bryant have come to his defence. Most of the defence is connected to Bryant’s $600 per hour public relations firm Navigator Ltd. but some others genuinely find it difficult to believe that someone like Bryant could be capable of such a vicious attack. He is educated, prominent and successful.
“And he is never going to commit another crime in his life. Why would you have to put a guy like that in jail?” says criminal lawyer, Robert Rotenberg echoing what many of Bryant’s friends are thinking.
But what kind of person gets carried away by road rage?
In the span of about thirteen months there have been at least three high profile cases of road rage attacks on cyclists. Two of them resulted in critical injuries and one in death. In all three attacks, the perpetrators were from the privileged class – a doctor, a show jumping son of wealthy parents and a former attorney general for Ontario. All three perpetrators deliberately drove their vehicles into their victims and all three seemed to want to punish their victims or teach them a lesson.
Read the rest of this entry »