But given similar incidents in nearby Newton recently, he’s willing to bet they weren’t dropped by someone by mistake.

Sebastian Ruiz Ferrer MacGregor can’t be certain that someone intentionally placed a handful of razor blades along a bike path on Baker Street in West Roxbury.

On Monday morning, as he traveled from Back Bay to Needham on his bicycle to work, Ruiz Ferrer MacGregor suddenly realized that he passed through something strange in the road near the Baker Street Jewish Cemeteries. Immediately after, his bike’s tire went flat, he said.

“I went back to see what happened and got my tire flat and I saw a bunch of blades,” he said. “I picked up all of the blades, and then just walked my bicycle to my work.”


Ruiz Ferrer MacGregor said besides the blades there was also a pile of branches obstructing the path, seemingly hand-placed a short distance from where his tire went flat.

He said the way in which the bundle of sticks was arranged struck him as odd.

“In my experience commuting using my bicycle, which I have done for several years, I have never seen sticks piled up that way in the bike lane,” he said.

Ruiz Ferrer MacGregor said when he arrived to his job, he e-mailed coworkers to warn them about what had happened, in case they, too, planned to bike on that route. That’s when he learned about the other instances of dangerous objects being found on area roads this summer.

In June, a cyclist in Newton rolled through a large collection of silver tacks that were conspicuously laying face-up in the bike lane on Winchester Street.

A month later, thumbtacks were again found in Newton, this time sprinkled across a bike lane on Nahanton Street. Police called it a targeted offense against cyclists.


After speaking with colleagues, Ruiz Ferrer MacGregor said he reached out to Newton police to report what happened. Because the section of Baker Street where he found the razor blades is in Boston, he was advised to reach out to Boston police.

He said he spoke with an officer who told him the city’s Parks Department would be notified. He was also told to call the BOS:311 constituency service, he said.

While a police report was not filed, Ruiz Ferrer MacGregor submitted a photo of the blades to the BOS:311 app. The case was closed Monday afternoon, since the blades had already been cleaned up.

Ruiz Ferrer MacGregor said while it’s possible that someone may have dropped a package of razor blades by accident while traveling in the bike lane, causing them to spread out across the roadway, he suspects the act was malicious, due to the location.

Baker Street, where Ruiz found the sharp objects, is within minutes of both Winchester and Nahanton streets, just over the city line.

“Hopefully, this was random,” he said. “But it didn’t seem random.”

Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.