Tommi Jo Mejer, 50, was arrested this week after investigators linked her 14-year-old son to an e-motorcycle crash that critically wounded an 81-year-old man April 16, according to a news release from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
Months before the crash, Mejer had been “warned of the dangers of continuing to allow her middle school son to illegally ride an e-motorcycle,” as well as the potential consequences, Orange County prosecutors said.
Her son is accused of “doing wheelies” on his e-motorcycle in the middle of the road near El Toro High School in Lake Forest when he hit the 81-year-old man, who prosecutors say was a veteran of the Vietnam War and had been working as a substitute teacher. The man remains hospitalized and in critical condition, according to prosecutors.
Mejer has now been charged on suspicion of felony child endangerment and felony accessory after the fact of a crime, as well as misdemeanors for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, loaning a motor vehicle to an unlicensed driver and providing false information to an officer. It wasn’t immediately clear what criminal repercussions, if any, have been brought against her son, who was not identified because he’s a minor.
If convicted of all the charges against her, Mejer faces a maximum sentence of six years in state prison.
Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said that state law has made it “virtually impossible for prosecutors to hold juveniles accountable,” so his office has taken aim at parents. Juveniles in the U.S. are subject to a separate justice system, which focuses more on rehabilitation than the adult system, because of children’s ongoing development.
“Parents who buy their child an e-motorcycle and let them ride them illegally or help modify e-bikes to transform them into e-motorcycles are handing their children a loaded weapon — and those parents are going to be prosecuted,” Spitzer said in a statement. “There is absolutely no reason that an unlicensed, untrained child with no concept of the rules of the road should be riding a motorcycle that can go up to nearly 60 miles per hour next to cars on a public street and think that by some miracle they are going to be safe.”
About a year ago, Mejer had an interaction with Orange County deputies after someone posted pictures of her then-13-year-old son riding the e-motorcycle, according to prosecutors. At the time, Mejer told deputies that she had purchased her son a Surron Ultra Bee electric motorbike and “knew he drove it recklessly,” according to body-worn camera footage reviewed by prosecutors. At the time, the deputies “warned her that she could face potential criminal charges if she continued to allow him to ride the e-motorcycle, which he could not legally ride,” the release said.
After the April 16 crash involving a Surron motorbike, Mejer was recorded on body-worn camera footage telling deputies that neither she nor her teenage son own or have access to such a Surron, the release said. Deputies who responded to the crash said the rider of the e-motorcycle left the scene.
Surron motorbikes are advertised online as “easy to maneuver like a bicycle, with the torque and power of an off-road motorcycle.” It’s marketed as an off-road dirt bike, capable of reaching up to 60 mph, according to the website.
Riders of such e-motorcycles must be 16 years of age and possess a motorcycle license, prosecutors said.
Mejer is the third parent this year Orange County prosecutors have criminally charged related to their children illegally riding e-motorcycles. Last month, Spitzer’s office filed child endangerment charges against a Yorba Linda man who is accused of modifying his son’s e-bike to reach up to 60 mph, essentially making it a motorcycle. The 12-year-old was critically injured when he ran a red light on the bike and was hit by a car, prosecutors said.
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