Viral dirt bike jump lands teen in handcuffs, Gilbert Police impound bike
Teen arrested for jumping dirt bike 15 feet high over Gilbert road: police
A viral video shows a teen jumping his dirt bike over a residential street in Gilbert. FOX 10's Steve Nielsen learns why this act landed the teen in handcuffs.
GILBERT, Ariz. - Caught on camera, an incredible 15-foot-tall jump across a street on a dirt bike, but the feat isn't being celebrated.
What we know:
Instead, the rider was put into handcuffs and the bike impounded because the jump happened on a residential road right next to homes.
Recker Road is just feet away from homes, and it's this spot in between where the jump happened. In fact, there still is what looks like some of the landing spots for the bike in the grass.
The backstory:
A portion of the video posted to Instagram, garnered nearly one million likes and 17 million views, showed a teenager jumping his dirt bike over a residential street.
He was arrested the same day.
"That's careless, outrageous," said Officer Travis Sheppard of the Gilbert Police Department.
The teen is now facing a count of reckless driving, and his bike has been impounded.
"There's at 3:30 in the afternoon, young moms out walking their kids, people coming home from work, kids trying to make their way back home," Sheppard said. "They're out there playing, and a community member saw an airborne dirtbike in the air."
In the grassy retention area along Recker Road, a drone was used to recreate the moment when the motorcycle jumped one street, a median, then another before landing in the grass.
What they're saying:
"My son knows he made an error he he’s very sorry about what he did. He suffered a whole litany of consequences for it," Nick Campbell said.
Nick Campbell is the father of the rider,18-year-old Sam Campbell.
"He recognizes what he did was wrong and is very contrite about it. He’s upset, he wishes he could go back and fix it," Campbell added.
The other side:
Online comments are filled with support for the rider, but neighbors disagreed.
"Where are the parents? That's what makes me the most upset," said Gilbert resident Kelly Richards. "There's no parenting in this neighborhood with these kids on these bikes, and it's getting frustrating, and many, many households are getting pretty ticked off with it."
Dig deeper:
This isn't the first time this spot has seen jumps. Gilbert Police posted a video in October of another jump and arrest for reckless driving.
"We've never hosted X Games," Sheppard said. "This isn't a place where Olympics happen or sporting on a bike like that's tolerated. And so if they want to ride a bike in that fashion, by all means, but that needs to happen on a track. That's the appropriate place for that."
On a GoFundMe page, thousands have been donated to help the rider get his bike back from impound, but police say it won't be released because they're holding it for evidence in this criminal investigation.
What's next:
The father said his son is studying to be a nuclear engineer and wants to make this right.
One neighbor said he hopes these trees mature quickly because that would prevent any more jumps from happening.
Map of where the incident occurred.
The Source: This information was gathered from Gilbert Police and neighbors in the area.