A mother in California, Tommi Jo Mejer, faces felony charges after her 14-year old son allegedly struck an 81-year-old veteran with an electric motorcycle. Prosecutors allege Mejer ignored prior police warnings that the vehicle was illegal for her son to operate. Officials said this is the third similar case recently prosecuted in Orange County, following similar incidents in Yorba Linda and Huntington Beach. Following the tragic accident Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer issued the following statement in a press release:
“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. That is not a threat. That is a promise.
“This 81-year-old man survived flying combat missions in Vietnam protecting freedom and now he is clinging to life because a mother refused to parent her child and he was run over in the street by a vehicle that should have never been on the road. 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.
“The state Legislature has made it virtually impossible for prosecutors to hold juveniles accountable for committing serious crimes, and the only way to stop the carnage E-Bikes and E-motorcycles are causing across Orange County is to hold parents accountable for the crimes they allow their children to commit.”
