For Md. Cyclist, a Weekend Ride Took a Fatal Turn

A blanket of humidity hung over the Washington area as temperatures hovered around 90 degrees. As Hawthorne Road heads northwest toward the Potomac River, the smooth, gray macadam stretches flat for a few miles. Gordon could have traveled fast enough to hear wind whistling. Then, after a bend, the road descends. On the downslope -- in the seconds before he died -- Gordon easily could have reached 30 mph.

Police said a Mitsubishi Eclipse traveling at an undetermined speed swerved onto the shoulder behind Gordon and struck him -- not a sideswipe, but a direct hit, which dented the center of the Mitsubishi's front license plate.

The impact hurled Gordon into the air, and he came down on top of the car as it stopped, shattering its windshield and caving in the roof, police said. Then he tumbled to the pavement with massive injuries.

He was buried Thursday after a funeral at First Baptist Church of Waldorf.

When Trooper Leonard K. Hewitt arrived at the crash scene about 12:15 p.m., minutes after the crash, he saw the mangled bike on the ground about 10 feet from Gordon's body. The driver of the gray Mitsubishi, Don S. Pittman Jr., 30, was sitting on a guardrail, in short pants and a yellow jersey.

"He appeared to be in a daze," Hewitt wrote in an affidavit filed in court. "I suspected he was under the influence of a drug and/or alcohol."

Pittman, who lives in the county's Pomfret area, had gone out for fast food and was on his way home when the crash occurred, police said. He did not respond to telephone messages from a reporter this week seeking his account of what happened. According to the affidavit, he told Hewitt that he had smoked marijuana the night before and had taken a dose of Zyban, an antidepressant, about 90 minutes before the crash.

Searching the 2003 Mitsubishi, Hewitt wrote, he found a Budweiser bottle on the floor and a baggie under a seat containing 6.5 grams of marijuana.

At the state police barracks in La Plata, Hewitt gave Pittman three sobriety tests.

When the trooper held up a finger and moved it from side to side, asking Pittman to follow it with his eyes, Pittman could not smoothly do so, Hewitt said in the affidavit. He said Pittman was unable to smoothly walk nine steps, heel to toe, and could not stand with one foot six inches off the ground while counting to 30.

Pittman was charged with possessing marijuana and released from the county jail early Sunday on $5,000 bond, according to court records. Hewitt said in the affidavit that "further charges are pending" while authorities await the results of a blood test on Pittman and a report by the state police accident investigation unit.

After she passed the crash scene, Tammy Gordon called her daughter. "Has Daddy got home yet?" she asked. No, said Jessie. And he hadn't called.

Maybe she had just missed him, she thought. Maybe he was up ahead. She kept driving, along lonely roads, past farms and new subdivisions, hoping to see him.

Finally, she drove home.

And she waited.

And then she got out a phone book and called the county sheriff.

"Were there any accidents involving cyclists today?" she asked.

When the sheriff's office transferred her to the state police, she inquired again: "Have there been any accidents involving cyclists today?" The call-taker said yes and began asking her questions about her husband. And now the fear that had crept over her took firm hold, and there was no escaping it, no way to block it out.

"And then it became hard to breathe," she said.