Remembering a Rider Murdered by Hate

Deciding to act on this rage, Navarro is alleged to have “intentionally swerved his truck” into Thiessen head-on because all Harley riders are “white racists.” Lest there be any doubt as to the intentional nature of the act, according to the complaint, Navarro had been “thinking about targeting a white person and killing them with a vehicle earlier that day,” and he “picked a motorcycle because he wanted the person to die,” because “white people drive motorcycles,” and “the Harley culture is made up of white racists.”

As Curtis noted, save a few local news outlets, Thiessen’s tragic death received little attention.

After Curtis’ piece in National Review, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel finally decided to cover the incident, nearly three weeks after Thiessen was killed.

“In all honesty, I hadn’t heard about the story myself until a week later. A friend sent me an article out of Virginia,” Curtis told Empower Wisconsin. “It bothered me for two weeks that nobody at the Journal Sentinel or the (Wisconsin) State Journal thought it was worth covering.”

“When you look at the current narrative the left is pushing on race relations, it’s so poisonous. To not provide coverage for something that doesn’t fit their narrative only proves they are going to push one side of this whole debate. It’s just sad.”

Thiessen is a retired cop in a time when cops’ lives don’t seem to matter much to many on the left. As Curtis wrote, Thiessen was Born in Milwaukee, and was a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, serving for four years after graduating from L. P. Goodrich High School in Fond du Lac. After his military service, he devoted the next 26 years to the police department of Fairfax, Va. He returned to Wisconsin to finish his career in law enforcement by serving as a Wisconsin Department of Justice special agent, working in the Internet Crimes Against Children unit. He leaves behind a daughter and grandchildren.

Schmidt and the organizers of Saturday’s benefit ride want to send a message that hate — no matter where it comes from or where it’s directed — is ripping this nation apart. There’s a bond between bikers, he said. They live by a code: Ride free or die. He said that transcends race, it transcends politics.

“To be categorized at all as hateful doesn’t reflect what motorcycle riders are today,” he said. “Phillip was an innocent motorcycle rider. If he would have been wearing his helmet and had been a different race, he would have been killed, too. That’s the total definition of prejudice.”