This isn’t the column I was planning to write when I first read that an 80-year-old winter resident of The Moorings was arrested last week after what police have labeled a hit-and-run accident near St. Helen’s Catholic Church.
And if you, too, had read the four-paragraph, Page 6A blurb in the Jan. 16 edition of the Press Journal, this isn’t the column you’d expect me to write.
Why would anyone dare attempt to defend a driver who crashed into a bicyclist at a busy intersection and left the scene without stopping to see if the cyclist was injured?
Truth is, if the accident had occurred that way, you’d probably be reading my thoughts on the potentially dangerous combination of bicyclists sharing our roadways with elderly drivers.
But it didn’t exactly occur that way.
Turns out, our Stuart-based daily newspaper – too busy inundating us with redundant reports on the Lake Okeechobee discharges into the St. Lucie River to adequately cover the news here – failed to give us the full story.
Richard Gibula, who faces a felony charge of “Leaving the Scene of a Traffic Crash Involving Personal Injury,” might not be guilty of anything.
“What you read in the paper isn’t what really happened,” said Karen Frey, a Vero Beach resident who witnessed the accident, which occurred shortly after 2 p.m. Jan. 5 at the intersection of 20th Street (State Road 60) and 20th Avenue. “They made it sound like a hit-and-run, and it wasn’t. The man driving the car stopped and asked if the bicyclist was okay.”
In fact, Frey was so upset by what she read in the Press Journal that she called the Vero Beach Police Department the next day to give her account of the accident.
She said her van was idling to the immediate right of Gibula’s car at the intersection, where he was in the left lane and they both waited at a red light. When the light turned green, she started to move forward, only to notice a man on a bicycle crossing in front of her. She hit the brakes.
“The light changed and I just happened to look to my right, which is something I don’t always do,” Frey said. “And there comes this guy on a bicycle, just flying across the intersection.
“If I hadn’t looked to my right, I would’ve been the one who hit him.”
According to the VBPD’s complaint affidavit, Joseph Lomba III was pedaling south on 20th Avenue, proceeding through the intersection at 20th Street, when he was struck by Gibula’s westbound 2014 Lincoln MKZ and knocked off his bike.
Lomba told police he got up, moved his bike out of the road and the driver asked, “Are you okay?”
The 36-year-old cyclist said he replied, “I don’t know.”
The driver then left the scene, continuing westbound on 20th Street.
Lomba wasn’t carrying his cell phone, so he also left the scene and returned to his Vero Beach Avenue home before calling the police and giving a description of the incident, car and driver, the affidavit said.
“Mr. Lomba had visible injury to his left arm, both legs and complained of pain to his ribs,” the complaint said, adding, “His bicycle front tire was bent and the pedal on the left side was pushed forward.”
In a next-day, follow-up conversation with police, Lomba said he had gone to the emergency room immediately after reporting the accident and “suffered no broken bones but had bruising to his ribs and ankle as well as a light concussion.”
A police investigation soon discovered that the America’s Best Auto Body Shop on 16th Street had given an estimate for front-end damage to a car matching the description of Gibula’s Lincoln, and police quickly connected the dots.
When police reached Gibula by phone three days after the accident, he gave his version of what happened, saying the bicyclist hit his car and that he “didn’t see him coming because there was a large SUV next to my car” – which meshes with Frey’s account.
Gibula said the cyclist got up after being hit and moved to the sidewalk, where the driver asked him if he was OK.
There, his version differs from what Lomba told police.
According to the affidavit, Gibula said the cyclist responded by saying, “Yes, go” and waved at him.
Assuming no real harm was done, Gibula continued on his way to Wal-Mart, where he noticed the damage to the front of his car.
Lomba, however, reiterated to police that he replied, “I don’t know,” and said he never told Gibula to leave or waved him on.
So it didn’t matter that Gibula cooperated fully, providing police with “all of his personal, insurance and vehicle information.” Or that he made no attempt to conceal the crash. Or that there’s no evidence he was aware, at the time off the accident, that he might’ve broken any laws.
It didn’t matter that Frey, who had a perfect view of the accident, told police Lomba caused the crash by pedaling through a red light and “just flying across the intersection.”
It didn’t matter that Gibula, upon learning of the warrant for his arrest, went to the Vero Beach Police Department station last week and surrendered himself.
Police charged Gibula with a felony and booked him into the county jail, where he was released only after posting a $5,000 bond.
I tried to reach him by phone at his Reef Road home and left messages asking him to call.
His wife subsequently told a friend his attorney had told him to say nothing.
“I feel bad for him,” Frey said. “It wasn’t like he knew he did something wrong and was trying to get away. He was as nice as could be. I heard him ask the guy on the bicycle if he was OK. I couldn’t hear the guy’s response, but he seemed fine.”
“The only thing the driver did wrong, I guess, was leave,” she added. “But honest to God, in that busy intersection with all that traffic, if the guy on the bicycle said he was okay, I probably would’ve done the same thing.
“That’s why, when I saw the way it came out in the newspaper, I had to call the police. It wasn’t right.”
Those four paragraphs on Page 6A in the Press Journal last week didn’t tell the whole story. It didn’t provide an accurate account of what happened and why.
It treated this accident as a typical hit-and-run case, even though the bicyclist was cited for a pedestrian violation and fined $43.
The way this was presented wasn’t fair to Gibula, who, it turns out, might not be guilty of anything.
That’s why I wrote this column. Just as you’d expect.