A San Francisco news reporter claimed he was attacked by teenagers, who tried to steal his bicycle last weekend but escaped the robbery when he told them they were going to be on the news.
Dan Noyes, an award-winning investigative reporter for ABC7 Bay Area, was riding his bicycle in the Presidio National Park site, near the Golden Gate Bridge, when he encountered the massive group.
“I’m coming home and I see a group of probably 15 young teens, young teens probably couldn’t drive yet, a lot on bicycles,” Noyes said in a video posted to his social media accounts on Wednesday.
“And one of the kids all of a sudden just rushes over and body blocks me off my bike. I came crashing to the ground, my left elbow is pretty darn sore, hope it’s not a hairline fracture or something, but I nailed hard onto the ground,”
Noyes quickly got up as the kid grabbed the bike and began to run away but the reporter stopped the potential thief with the threat of public humiliation.
“I jumped up and went after him and said ‘You’re about to be on Channel 7,’ the kids at that just scattered,” Noyes said.
The shaken-up reporter said he was hospitalized and shared a photo of his left elbow, sporting a rather large bruise alongside a diagram of a radial head fracture, an injury he suffered and confirmed to SFist.
Noyes captured video of the teens fleeing in different directions, with one group heading south towards the Presidio Tunnel Tops while the other group fled to the iconic bridge.
He believed the culprit was a teen who escaped the area on foot while the rest of the group rode away.
Following the attack, Noyes said he spoke with several witnesses who stopped and checked on him.
“I’m sorry to see our city like this,” he told a tourist from Germany.
“Man I’ve been a victim of crime before but this was one of the more personal and shocking ones.”
Noyes said the US Park Police responded to the scene as he was concerned about other people being targeted.
The California city has become riddled with crime and drugs over the past few months, as daylight robberies and open drug use have plagued the Golden City.
Last week, tourists turned into victims as their belongings were stolen out of their vehicles by a group of thieves in the Marina District, a high-end neighborhood located on the San Francisco Bay, just east of where Noyes was attacked.
“We saw them taking bags from our vans and started putting it into the black SUV,” one tourist told the Post about the Sept. 13 robbery. “That’s when my friends started running and other people there were honking their horns. I heard someone yell, ‘Don’t run to them! They might have a gun!’
Thefts aren’t the only problem the city is facing as drug overdose deaths hit a record high last month with 84 reported fatalities, 66 of them involving fentanyl.
