A 36-year-old Memphis man with a mental disability suffered a broken shoulder and scrapes across his body after his electric scooter collided with a Memphis Police Department cruiser near Graceland on Elvis Presley Boulevard on Wednesday. Robert Henard was on his way to his girlfriend's house when the crash happened, and police say he was the one at fault. His mother tells a very different story, one involving an aggressive officer, a surveillance camera, and what she calls an attempted cover-up.
According to WREG, the Memphis Police Department said Henard was traveling on the left side of the road, facing oncoming traffic, when he struck the police vehicle. Officers issued him a citation for failing to drive on the right side of the roadway, a violation of Tennessee's rules of the road under Tennessee Code Annotated § 55-8-115, which requires drivers and operators of vehicles to stay on the right half of the roadway except when passing or when a lane is closed. Robert's mother, Annie Henard, disputes that account entirely, alleging that police actually hit her son and then tried to cover it up.
Annie Henard said a witness reported that the officer involved was traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of the crash. She also said the officer told Robert he was in the street and was threatening him during the encounter. Under Tennessee's Electric Scooter Act, devices like the one Robert was riding are generally granted the same legal rights and duties as bicycles on public roads, a framework detailed by Bo Law.
A Camera on the Sidewalk
Annie Henard said her son had been riding his scooter on the sidewalk before the crash but moved into the street specifically to avoid a police surveillance camera positioned there. Memphis operates a citywide network of more than 2,000 pole-mounted SkyCop cameras with blinking blue lights that stream live video to the department's Real-Time Crime Center, according to reporting from Vice. Notably, city guidance from the Memphis Bikeway and Pedestrian Program already instructs e-scooter riders to travel on the street or in bike lanes rather than sidewalks, yield to pedestrians, and park in designated furniture zones — meaning Henard's move into the roadway would have technically aligned with municipal policy even as it triggered the roadway-side citation.
Henard was transported to Regional One Medical Center, home to the Elvis Presley Trauma Center, the only accredited Level 1 adult trauma facility within 150 miles, serving West Tennessee, North Mississippi and Eastern Arkansas, per UTHSC News. He remained at the hospital all day before returning home at about 2 a.m. He is now scheduled for shoulder surgery next Tuesday.
A Pattern of Police Crashes
The collision adds to a broader pattern of police vehicle crashes across the city. MPD officers were involved in 243 vehicle collisions through late August of last year, and officers were determined to be at fault in 103 of those incidents, according to data reported by WATN-TV. In January, an unmarked MPD cruiser crashed into a pickup truck at Elvis Presley Boulevard and Winchester Road after running a red light, injuring the officer and another driver; the same station reported the officer was not operating in emergency mode at the time. MPD's own policy manual requires the department's Special Traffic Investigation Section to respond and conduct formal scene investigations whenever a marked or unmarked cruiser is involved in a crash or a severe critical injury occurs.
Research collisions between motor vehicles and electric scooters carry a significantly higher risk of severe bodily and orthopedic injury compared with non-vehicle falls, according to findings published in the Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research. The weight disparity between cars and light micromobility devices like scooters remains a central factor driving these outcomes, the research indicates. It remains unresolved exactly how the collision between Henard's scooter and the police cruiser unfolded, with police attributing the crash to Henard's positioning on the road and his mother maintaining that officers struck him and tried to conceal it.
