Photo by joyride1x1.

It’s, sadly, a far too common scenario in the District: a cyclist is riding home late at night through a busy intersection, when a car attempts a quick turn and hits them. Usually, though, the driver and cyclist don’t proceed to get into a physical altercation which ends with another biker on the bad end of a concussion. But that’s what happened to Ian Barry and Saul Leiken last Friday night.

Barry and Leiken were riding through Adams Morgan around 2 a.m. last Friday, when Barry was hit head-on by a red Camaro at the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW. After bouncing off the car’s windshield, Barry then confronted the driver, yelling at him to get out of the vehicle so that they could exchange information — as a scuffle between those two broke out, another passenger in the car noticed Leiken calling the police to report the vehicle’s license plate number. At that point, a group of people got out of the car, chased down Leiken, forcing him to the ground and kicking him in the head several times. The pair were saved from further assault when a bystander chased the men that were beating Leiken away with a fake taser gun.

Both Barry and Leiken work at City Bikes — Leiken for four years — so they’re obviously no strangers to the occasionally deadly struggle for space between bikes and cars. But the ordeal has obviously left them shaken; Leiken confessed to Rend Smith of the City Paper that he has “yet to ride my bike at night again,” and is “a little afraid of doing so.”

Debora Harding, the CEO of City Bikes, tells us via email that police have a suspect in custody, and both Barry and Leiken are scheduled to participate in a line-up identification soon. “It gutted us though,” said Harding about the whole situation.