‘He got jumped’: Man severely beaten, robbed while riding bike in park in Third Ward area

HOUSTON – A Houston area man says he ended up in the Intensive Care Unit after being jumped and robbed while biking on the Columbia Tap trail, and now, his family members are sending a warning to others.

The man is still in the hospital and the people responsible are still out there.

“What he does when he has any free time is he rides trails all around the Houston area,” his wife said.

They asked us not to identify them out of safety concerns but want to let the public know what happened around 4 o’clock Saturday afternoon.

“He got jumped by he thinks four or five males,” she said. “Youth, they were young.”

She says they stopped him right in his tracks.

“They tackled him, they put their shoulder into him. Knocked him off of his bike, demanded his wallet and his phone,” she said.

She says once the thieves knocked him to the ground, they demanded the code to his phone.

When he gave them the wrong one, one of them pistol-whipped her husband in his helmet so hard, it cracked.

She says the thieves took off.

A Good Samaritan lent her husband his phone so he could call for help. He ended up at an Urgent Care and was dealt another blow.

“They said, ‘OK, you have four broken ribs, and what’s called a hemopneumothorax,’” the wife added.

A Hemopneumothorax is when air and blood get trapped between the lungs and the surrounding membrane. She says one of his lungs also collapsed.

Adding insult to injury she says the thieves continued their rampage.

“They used the Uber app on my husband’s phone … and they went directly to the Galleria,” she said.

She says they tried to go on a shopping spree with the stolen credit cards and even tried to Apple Pay themselves but they were unsuccessful.

“Someone Venmo’d $400 to a specific person who had their real picture in their profile pic, which the police have now,” she said.

Then it appears they got hungry.

“They tried to send Door Dash to themselves all night which I was still getting the alerts for, so I had that address coming at me,” she said.

Houston police are investigating and the victim’s wife says the material things can be replaced, her husband is still in the hospital facing a long road to recovery. She’s concerned the culprits who have not been arrested may strike again and is urging bikers to be vigilant.