We all know there are lunatics out there who could snap at any moment and do something crazy and violent. Sometimes all you can do is hope it doesn’t happen in your neighborhood. But in this instance it has happened in my neighborhood. About a mile from my house someone in a car ran into three cyclists on Sunday night, killing one of them.

In the first crash, a man said a black Toyota sedan sideswiped him at Edwards and Warner at around 10 p.m., leaving him with minor injuries.

About a half-hour later, a second collision occurred, about a quarter of a mile north of the first, at Brad Drive and Edwards — there, another cyclist said he was aggressively sideswiped, again by a black Toyota, Cuchilla said.

“He believes it was intentional,” Cuchilla said.

The third hit-and-run happened about 15 minutes later just a block away. The victim, who was 70-years-old, survived until police and paramedics arrived but then succumbed to his injuries at the scene. Last night, the suspected driver was arrested. He’s a teenager:

A teenage driver was arrested after the authorities said he intentionally struck three bicyclists, killing one, in three separate incidents that took place in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Sunday night, police said on Wednesday.

The Huntington Beach Police Department identified the slain bicyclist as 70-year-old Steven Gonzales, a resident of the city. The suspect, who was arrested on Tuesday night and was only identified as a juvenile male between 14 and 18 years old, is charged with homicide and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, the police said.

The LA Times adds that the suspect is a minor.

A boy was arrested Tuesday in connection with a series of hit-and-run incidents in Huntington Beach in which one person was killed, according to authorities.

Huntington Beach police arrested the individual — whom they only described as male and a minor — on Tuesday at about 9 p.m. on suspicion of hitting multiple bicyclists with a car.

So far no one is giving any hint as to a possible motive.

As a local resident, I can say I fully expected to read about someone being killed on a bicycle in the area but not quite like this. Let me explain.

Over the past year, a bunch of teens in my neighborhood have gotten e-bikes. These bikes are fairly expensive and capable of traveling at 25 mph or more. You often see these teens, some of whom look no older than 13 or 14, in a group of 7-8 riders, like a middle school biker gang. I’ve seen them doing wheelies down the middle of the street, cutting off drivers and swerving across traffic in front of cars on streets where the speed limit is 40 mph. The ignore red lights and stop signs for the most part.

I’ve also seen them up to other things including digging up soil at a local school to make a ramp they can jump their bikes over. Once, a few months ago, I turned onto a street leading toward my house and they were stringing a piece of audio tape across the street between two poles. It was dusk and if I hadn’t seen them doing it and realized what it was, I might have mistaken it for a cable and hit the breaks. I’m pretty sure that was the idea.

Some of this is normal teen stupidity, something I think most of us have been guilty of when we were that age. But these kids are essentially playing in traffic and generally act like they own the road. Because they can travel much faster than a regular bike, they are interacting with cars in ways that are new and very dangerous. I figured it was a matter of time before one of them got seriously hurt cutting off a driver who couldn’t stop in time.

Huntington Beach police said they were aware of a problem with e-bike riders just last month:

“When they do ultimately get in accidents, we see greater injury because they’re going faster with heavier bikes, and a lot of times e-bikes have opened up this world to people that aren’t maybe the most comfortable cyclists, and they go faster than they really should be riding on bikes,” HBPD Lt. Thoby Archer said.

He said new e-bike riders, especially kids, may not know the rules of the road, like stopping at stop signs.

“We just had a horrible accident with a 14-year-old girl who went right through a red light with AirPods in her ears, didn’t stop at a red light and got hit by a vehicle. Didn’t even see it coming,” Archer said.

Obviously what happened Sunday night wasn’t an accident. Some kid apparently went out looking for people to injure and wound up killing someone. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would do that but I guess we’ll find out now that he has been arrested.

Here’s a local news report on the murder.