More Bad News for Chief Timoney

Bonner leapt into action. He ran back inside, borrowed a bike, and then began scouring downtown Miami. "Basically I was doing larger and larger concentric circles, for like 45 minutes," he explains, "sprinting on my bike, getting madder and madder and madder and madder."

His circles had enlarged all the way to Overtown when he saw it. "I'm going down NW 14th Street and I see, two blocks down, a back wheel and a reflector that look like mine. You know your bike. So I got myself really hyped up," he explains, "and said to myself, This guy is going to be six foot seven, pure muscle, and I've got one chance to scare the shit out of him."

Mike Gorman

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• Marcos Daniel Jimenez
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• Tyler Bonner
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Bonner sprinted up behind the man and screamed, "Just get the fuck off the bike!" The bicycle thief "kind of wobbled," Bonner says, "and then he backs up and goes, 'Hey, don't hit me.'"

And then the man, who was Bonner's height and in his midthirties, made him an offer: "He says, 'Hey, hey, I'll ride it back with you.'" Bonner hesitated and then accepted. They chatted the whole way back, Bonner says. "By the time we got back, we had exchanged names. He said, 'I'm not a bad guy; I just saw a bike and I just took it.'

"He was a funny guy," Bonner reflects. "He was trying to diffuse the situation with laughter. He did a pretty good job." — Isaiah Thompson