Bicyclists keep getting hurt riding into mystery string on Marine Parkway Bridge

More bicyclists reported being hurt after riding into string drawn at neck- and head-level across the Marine Parkway Bridge pedestrian path this week — following similar encounters earlier this summer.

None of the recent riders were seriously hurt — unlike a cyclist who wound up in intensive care after riding into what police and another injured rider suspect was a kite string in early June. But the latest incident has led to more questions for the MTA and police, who so far have not said why this keeps happening.

In each case, cyclists reported biking across the bridge — which spans across Rockaway Inlet and connects the peninsula to Brooklyn — and not seeing the string until it was too late.

Some riders have theorized that it could be a runaway string from local “kite fighting” contests or a fishing line caught in the bridge’s infrastructure. Some voiced the possibility that it was intentionally set to hurt bikers using the bridge’s narrow walkway.

A spokesperson for the NYPD, asked whether the agency was investigating the incidents as a pattern, said no criminality was suspected. Police confirmed taking one report of an incident Sunday.

“I felt pain, but I didn't know what it was and there was nobody around me,” said Angel Montalvo, 36, who described being struck around 8:15 p.m. Sunday while riding an e-bike north back to Bay Ridge after a day at the beach.

Montalvo was left with thin, line-shaped red marks across their neck and forehead.

“It scared the crap out of me and so I just feel like more people should know about it to avoid it,” Montalvo said.

Montalvo posted about the incident on Reddit, where several other people chimed in with similar experiences about run-ins with string on the same day.

Sam Makagon, 46, told Gothamist his 18-year-old son noticed something glimmering in front of him just before making contact with it while biking across the bridge back to Brooklyn late Sunday afternoon.

“He ran into an object that looked like a string, and then he thought afterwards it could have been like a string from a kite, ’cause it was very hard to see,” Makagon said. “It was like nylon, like I guess kind of like a fishing line, and it sliced him across the neck, but didn’t break skin.”

Makagon said his son ducked and then stopped biking to take stock of what had happened, but the string was gone.

Alex Brickman, a 36-year-old Bushwick resident and longtime bicyclist, said he was also grazed by string on Sunday afternoon. He said he was riding behind other bicyclists when they slowed down suddenly. When he came across the string, he said it was “floating around,” rather than taut.

“ I assumed it was just like an errant fishing line that was kind of floating around. It's pretty windy up on that bridge,” he said. “ I'm not a seasoned fisherman or anything, but I've seen what a line looks like — a little plastic filament that almost looks like glass, and 'cause it was sunny, I saw the shimmer of it, but before I could really pay much more attention to it, I just kept riding.”

Bicycling across the Marine Parkway Bridge is common, but is actually forbidden by the MTA, which asks riders to dismount and walk. But Brickman said it's generally safer to bike than walk because of the number of cyclists and the narrowness of the pedestrian path.

On a visit to the bridge this week, Gothamist observed that most people who crossed were cyclists who stayed on their bikes. Only a handful of people crossed the bridge on foot.

A spokesperson for the MTA, which runs the bridge, said a cyclist reported a facial injury at noon Sunday “due to a wire or string that was strung across the walkway.” It wasn’t immediately clear if that incident was one of the same ones that riders described to Gothamist.

The agency deployed maintenance personnel Monday to canvass the walkways at both the Marine Parkway and Cross Bay bridges for dangerous or unsafe conditions, according to officials.

“Though [no strings] were detected on that canvass, MTA Bridges and Tunnels is stepping up its patrols of the two bridges given recent reports of errant off-property kite-fighting materials becoming wrapped on bridge components,” MTA spokesperson Aaron Donovan said.

Kite fighters try to cut the strings of their opponents' kites, sometimes by using string with glass coating.

The bridge stretches between Jacob Riis Park in Queens and Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, both National Parks Services sites. An NPS spokesperson didn’t provide comment as of the time of publication.

Jennifer Noble, 36, said the accounts on Reddit were all too familiar.

She previously told Gothamist was biking across the bridge with a friend on June 1 when she saw a kite flying near the bridge moments before a string cut her forehead and hand, and sliced her friend’s neck, sending them both to the hospital. Noble said she still hasn’t regained full function of her hand after a costly surgery, for which she is fundraising online. Her friend Robert Hillebrand's windpipe was severed and he required blood transfusions in order to save his life, according to friends.

Noble said city officials should do more to warn New Yorkers about the dangers of kite fighting.

“I really think a big part of this is community outreach. I think they should really be doing that community outreach … Maybe there needs to be something structural done with the bridge if this is an ongoing issue, like higher guard rails or something,” she said in an interview this week.

She added: “I'm so terrified of this happening to more people. I'm so terrified of someone dying.”

This story has been updated to reflect a statement from the NYPD.