BOSTON — Hours after a driver killed a cyclist on Tremont Street in Mission Hill Thursday morning, a Boston City Council staffer sent a bike safety advocate a private Instagram message telling him to "give it a rest."
The staffer, who identified herself as Korri, said in the message she is the social media manager for Boston City Councilor Ben Weber — whose District 6 includes the block where the fatal crash happened. Screenshots of her message went viral Thursday afternoon on Reddit's r/bikeboston. In full:
"Alex, this is Korri, Ben's social media manager. Ben and many on our team knew well and worked with Luisa and her parents. This is my opinion, not Ben's, but I wish you could give it a rest when tragedies like this happen. Give some breathing room, this literally happened hours ago."
Commenters flagged another problem with the message: the staffer appeared to have misspelled the victim's first name.
The cyclist killed on Tremont Street Thursday morning. Photo: obtained by Mass Daily News.
The crash
A driver struck a bicyclist at around 8:20 a.m. Thursday, July 9, on Tremont Street in Mission Hill, near the intersection with Parker Street and about a block north of the Roxbury Crossing Orange Line station, according to Boston.com. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene. Tremont Street was closed from Brigham Circle to Roxbury Crossing until around noon.
Boston Police at the scene of the fatal crash on Tremont Street, Mission Hill, Thursday morning. Photo: Boston.com.
The victim's name has not been officially released pending family notification and an autopsy. The Boston Globe reported that she was a cycling advocate and a transportation planner for the City of Boston.
A City Hall insider who worked with her told Mass Daily News she was warm, nice, and consistently receptive to feedback: "From a professional standpoint, she was a joy to work with. Always nice and receptive to feedback. Just a very kind soul."
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The half-mile stretch of Tremont Street where she was struck runs paint-only, unprotected bike lanes. Per Streetsblog Massachusetts, the same segment has recorded 20 non-fatal crashes since 2022 and one prior fatal crash in December 2024.
The advocate
The recipient of Korri's message is Alex Alex, a vocal advocate for bike infrastructure who mounted a longshot 2025 Boston mayoral campaign against Wu. He posted the exchange, along with his list of policy proposals, to Reddit's r/bikeboston Thursday morning — the thread has since drawn dozens of upvotes and comments.
In his own words:
"The council has nothing on the docket to do with traffic enforcement. I've been compiling the evidence the city should have been collecting itself in video format and submitting it to them."
The ideas Alex says he has been pitching to the full City Council for over a year include:
- Randomized traffic enforcement days to conserve BPD manpower and condition better driver behavior without constant surveillance
- A 311-based bounty program tying community reporting to youth-jobs funding
- Raised crosswalks to address accessibility, flooding, mismatched curbcuts, and cars parked in the crosswalk
- School streets and bike-to-school programs to trim the $200 million Boston Public Schools transportation budget
- A dedicated bike traffic unit within BPD to reduce taxpayer costs and increase police mobility
"There are dozens more ideas like these submitted to the entire council that they have not moved to turn into policy," Alex wrote. Korri's message, he said, "is literally the only time Weber's office has reached out to me."
The response
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The Reddit thread drew immediate agreement from other Boston bike advocates.
One resident wrote that she had "reported hundreds of blocked bike lanes and hundreds of cars parked blocking curbcuts, often uploading photos showing how my white-cane-using teen is stuck at these curbcuts." Requests, she said, either "sit open for years" or "they're closed with 'noted.'"
Another commenter: "Their mismanagement and pandering to vehicles indirectly causes these deaths. Shame on the city council, shame on Mayor Wu."
Another: "This was not the result of an accident or a mistake, this was the direct result of inaction actively chosen by elected leaders."
Perhaps the sharpest response summed the mood: Weber's staffer, one commenter wrote, "sounds like an NRA politician after a mass shooting."
Another commenter, a longtime Wu ally, added: "Advocates had an excellent relationship with the mayor and helped her get elected and re-elected. But she has decided to leave them on read for more than a year."
Ben Weber
Weber, endorsed by Mayor Wu in his 2023 run and re-elected in November 2025 with 86% of the vote against challenger Steven Berry, represents District 6 — Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, and parts of Mission Hill, Roslindale, and Roxbury. His public agenda still promises "more protected bike lanes" and an expanded speed-hump program.
Weber's office had not publicly commented on Korri's message as of Thursday evening. Mayor Michelle Wu's office had not publicly commented on the fatal crash as of Thursday evening.
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