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- A 16-year-old driving a truck ran over six cyclists in Texas, sending four to the hospital.
- One cyclist said the driver intentionally slowed down to blow smoke on the cyclists.
- The driver, who stayed on the scene following the collisions, has not been arrested, KRIV reported.
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A teen truck driver in Texas ran over six cyclists on Saturday, sending four of them to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The cyclists riding along a highway in Houston when a black diesel pickup truck intentionally slowed down and then accelerated in front of them to blow exhaust on the cyclists, one of the riders said.
"I thought someone was dead," cyclist Chase Ferrell said, according to KRIV. "I heard a lot of crunching. I heard brakes. Tires screeching. People screaming."
KTRK reported that two of the cyclists were treated at a local hospital in Waller County, and two others were airlifted to a Houston hospital to be treated for head injuries. Two other cyclists refused treatment.
Ferrell said the group was about 75 miles into their ride as they trained for an ironman. After the truck blew exhaust on cyclists in Ferrell's lane, the driver attempted to do the same maneuver on cyclists riding ahead of Ferrell, the cyclist said, culminating in the collision.
"The reason he couldn't stop is because he was accelerating to blow more diesel fuel on these cyclists," Ferrell said. "He ended up hitting three people before his brakes even started."
KRIV's Matthew Seedorff shared images of the crushed bicycles on the side of the road.
-Matthew Seedorff (@MattSeedorff) September 26, 2021
Ferrell added that the driver, identified as a 16-year-old male, was intentionally trying to harass the cyclists. Authorities did not comment on the driver's condition, KTRK reported.
"There was no reason for this to happen," Ferrell said, adding that the teen stayed on the scene following the collisions. "It wasn't like he was on his phone. [He] definitely meant to try and scare these people [or] intimidate them in some way. [Maybe he then] made a mistake and ran them over."
The teen driver was not arrested as of Saturday, KRIV reported. The Waller County Sheriff's Office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.