Modesto ride-sharing driver talks about assault on Bay Area freeway

Alex Quintana of Modesto was just working to support his 3-month-old son and make a life for his young family.

In a few minutes captured on videos that have played across the country, the Lyft driver was harassed and then surrounded by up to 15 gang members on dirt bikes on Highway 101 in San Francisco on Wednesday evening. The gang members punched and picked the 32-year-old Quintana, though the worst of the assault is not captured on the most graphic video, the driver said Friday.

Quintana said he was knocked to the ground three times. Near the end of the beating, one of the motorcycles ran over his left leg, breaking it in three places.

Family members said the bikers attacked an innocent man who is mostly disabled by spinal stenosis and osteoarthritis.

Quintana was in fair condition Friday at San Francisco General Hospital, where he underwent surgery to have pins implanted in his left leg. Doctors are waiting for the swelling to go down before performing another surgery. He faces at least 10 more days in the hospital and three months of follow-up care, he said.

“It is terrible,” said Rudy Payne of Modesto, the grandfather of Quintana’s child. “Here he is trying to make a living and he’s barely scraping by. I know he did not ask for it.”

Cecelia Dunn, his girlfriend, said seeing the video of the assault “made me sick.”

In a telephone interview, Quintana said he had just dropped off a rider and was headed to San Francisco International Airport to pick up a passenger.

When he got onto southbound Highway 101 at Cesar Chavez Street, a group of bikers were on the other side of the lanes merging toward the middle. They were doing wheelies and burnouts, blocking traffic, said Quintana, who was looking for openings to get through the slow-moving traffic.

Quintana said he inched into a lane where a biker was blocking cars, which upset the biker. Quintana said the biker punched the side mirror on the passenger side of his Toyota Camry and then broke it. The vehicles were moving about 2 mph, Quintana estimated.

Another biker broke the mirror on the driver’s side. “I was yelling at them to go to the shoulder,” said Quintana, who intended to get their names and any insurance information to pay for the damage.

The bikers were yelling at the driver, and one of them broke the passenger-side front window, spraying Quintana with glass. He said his reaction was to get out and confront the bikers.

“They started punching and kicking me from everywhere,” Quintana said.

The Lyft driver said he turned to the back corner of his car and “something happened to my ankle,” meaning he was possibly kicked. “I slipped and fell and grabbed this one dude by the shirttail,” Quintana said.

A 42-second video that has gone viral shows one biker pulling the Lyft driver backward onto the ground. The driver manages to get up and then is attacked by a second biker. Quintana is knocked to the ground and then the biker stands over him and punches him several times.

Quintana said the assault ended when he was run over by a motorcycle. Lying on the ground, he looked up at the same biker who has been upset when he inched into his lane. The biker looked at him and then throttled the engine, running over his leg.

Quintana said witnesses gathered around him to offer help. A couple of minutes later, an off-duty firefighter checked his vital signs and injuries. He said the attack seemed to last five minutes.

Authorities have said it wasn’t possible to identify the bikers because the motorcycles had no license plates and the gang members wore helmets. Quintana said police told him they know the name of the gang.

“Those guys should not even have been on the road,” Quintana said. “I didn’t want to cause any problems. I was just trying to get around them and get to work again.”

Police are looking for as many as 15 men in connection with the assault. The 42-second video of the incident played on news stations and Internet sites and a two-minute spot on NBC’s “Today” show.

Family members said it was an outrageous thing to happen to the Lyft driver, who is polite and plays soft music for riders and likes to show off his good reviews.

He has also driven for Uber.

For the past eight months, Quintana has traveled to San Francisco three to four times a week to earn to $600 to $800 as a driver. Dunn said she helped him acquire the car in June as they prepared for the birth of their child.

Aside from the stress and trauma of the incident, Quintana’s injuries create a financial hardship for the young family. Quintana may be sidelined from work for months.

“I am a Christian and I am trying not to let my heart feel a lot of hate,” Dunn said. “But it makes me angry because they picked an innocent person.”

This story was originally published March 10, 2017 at 7:52 PM with the headline "Modesto ride-sharing driver talks about assault on Bay Area freeway."