TRUE CRIME TUESDAY: TOMMI JO MEJER

Añadido: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Welcome to True Crime Tuesday. My name is Holly Overton and I'm a TV writer and novelist living in Los Angeles and I write books and TV that are loosely inspired by true crime and every Tuesday I talk about a crime that's making the headlines. And the crime today is took place right here in Southern California in Orange County and the person that was charged with the crime wasn't actually the person that did it. So Tommy Joe Meyer was a mother in Southern California in Orange County who her son had been she'd given him an e-bike and um had been had been like getting notifications that her son was being quite reckless and frankly dangerous with this e-bike which is already dangerous enough and to the point that people had posted video of him which she got very upset about online and then the police came to talk to her and on body camera they have actual footage of them telling Tommy how dangerous her son was being how reckless and that she needed to rein him in.

[00:01:04]But sadly Tommy did not do that. Nope, Tommy just ignored it and unfortunately her son continued to be reckless on the e-bike and he was doing wheelies outside the school and this 81-year-old retired Vietnam veteran and substitute teacher at Ashman was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was struck by this e-bike and Tommy's son ended up um killing him and was taken to the hospital and then died shortly after. Um and obviously yes, the son was responsible but he's a kid. He's a child and the Orange County officials obviously agreed with that and they decided that Tommy was responsible. She was the one that bought her son the bike and she was the one that allowed him to be reckless and even after she was warned, even after the police warned her, she still ignored it. So, she is now um facing charges for involuntary manslaughter. She was able to make bail.

[00:02:05]She paid $100,000, which I still don't think is right because Ed is dead and and now she's out and free. Um but this case is really fascinating to me. We've already seen um prosecutors prosecuting parents for buying their son their children firearms.

[00:02:22]Um and now we are seeing them go after parents who are allowing their kids to be reckless and the you know, and people are getting killed. So, I'll be interested to see what happens. I have a feeling there'll be a plea deal. Um but I hope she does get real jail time because Ed was, you know, a husband and a father and he deserved to live out his life and he did not deserve that kind of a death. And so, I do hope that um that he gets justice. Let me know what you think about this case and if there's a story that's making headlines that you think would make a good True Crime Tuesday, let me know about it in the comments.