Jana Kinsman is sharing her story in hopes it helps police make an arrest.
"From the moment he grabbed me, I was just screaming the whole time," said Kinsman.
The attack happened overnight, just after midnight. A short time after she was attacked, Kinsman took to Twitter to describe what happened, ending her horrifying account with a simple question: "Who reaches out of a car to try and kill a cyclist?"
Throughout the day, her story has been shared more than 15,000 times via social media. Many people are asking the same question she did: Why?
Kinsman is bruised, banged-up and begging for justice.
"Somebody in the rear passenger seat grabbed the messenger bag on my back and held me - and then I heard the car start to speed up," said Kinsman.
The few seconds the car pulled Kinsman north on Kimball felt like an eternity.
"It wasn't like they were trying to steal my bag, they were trying to grab me and screw around with me and get me off balance," said Kinsman.
Kinsman, who rides her bike daily checking on the 15 community beehives she started, says the person in the car only let go after her bike smashed into a parked car. The last thing she heard?
"It sounded like they were egging... each other on and kind of having fun with it, which is really sick," she said.
Data compiled over a five-year period show bike injury crashes in Chicago are up 27 percent and now average a little more than 1,500 per year, but experts say that does not mean biking is less safe, because the number of people commuting by bicycle is up 150 percent, to 15,000 daily.
"This is a case of assault," said Ethan Spotts of the Active Transportation Alliance. The bike safety advocate says what happened to Kinsman is more about criminal conduct than conflict between cars and bikes.
"That's part of the problem is that we're not thinking of each other as people on the streets," he said.
"It's hard to say what people will take away from it, but I definitely don't want it to be not to ride. Everyone should keep riding," said Kinsman, who said she would "absolutely" keep riding.
Witnesses who helped Kinsman say the people who attacked her were in a Chevy Tahoe, possibly purple.
Chicago police are asking anyone with information to give them a ring.
Friends and family of Jana have set up an online fundraiser for her to help her get back on her feet:
https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/lzx2/get-jana-back-on-her-wheels-
