Edwin Mieses, who was paralyzed from the waist down after the biker-SUV melee last September on the West Side Highway, said Wednesday that he doesn’t blame the man who hit him—but he hopes to one day walk again.
“Doctors told me it was a 99.9 percent that I wasn’t going to walk, but I refuse to believe that,” Mieses told “Today’s” Savannah Guthrie. “I want to walk more than they want me to walk.”
On September 29, 2013, Mieses was in a group of about 20 to 30 bikers that surrounded an SUV on the West Side Highway. According to police reports, one of the bikes bumped up against the SUV, leading the driver, Alexian Lien, 33, to speed up and run over Mieses. Police have not filed charges against Lien, whose wife and child were also in the car.
“As soon as he hit me, I shut my eyes,” Mieses said. “I didn’t want to open my eye because I knew that he had hurt me.”
Mieses broke two legs and suffered spinal cord injuries that left him paralyzed from the waist down. After Lien sped off, the motorcyclists with Mieses followed and pulled Lien out of his car, and beat him up. The whole incident was captured on a six-minute video. Eleven motorcyclists were arrested, and all but one face gang-assault charges.
Mieses said he doesn’t blame Lien, but his mother told “Today” that Lien “plowed over my son.”
“He damaged my son’s life forever,” said Mieses’ mother, Yolando Santiago.
