A Warning Is a Second Chance. This One Was Wasted.
We write a lot on this blog about second chances. Usually that means someone coming home from incarceration, trying to rebuild. Employers taking a shot. Communities opening a door.
But second chances don’t only look like that. Sometimes a second chance looks like a warning. A conversation. A knock on the door from a law enforcement officer telling a parent that her kid is riding a motorcycle illegally on public streets — and that someone is going to get hurt.
That warning came. It was documented. It was ignored. And now Ed Ashman is in a hospital fighting for his life.
What Happened
On April 16, around 4 p.m., Orange County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the area of Toledo Way and Ridge Route Drive near El Toro High School in Lake Forest after reports of a crash. They found Ed Ashman — an 81-year-old substitute teacher and Vietnam veteran — with life-threatening injuries. He had been struck by a 14-year-old performing wheelies in the middle of the street. The teen fled the scene.
Ashman was walking home from El Toro High School, where students and a verified GoFundMe describe him as a beloved substitute teacher and proud grandfather who served as a U.S. Airman during the Vietnam War.
The vehicle wasn’t some souped-up kid’s bicycle. The vehicle was a 2025 Surron Ultra Bee — classified under California state law as an e-motorcycle, not an e-bike — requiring riders to be older than 16 and to have a motorcycle license when riding on public roads. It is capable of nearly 60 miles per hour. An unlicensed 14-year-old was riding it in the street outside a high school.
The Warning That Came First
This didn’t come out of nowhere. According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, deputies had previously had a documented conversation with Tommi Jo Mejer — the teen’s mother — in which she admitted that she had purchased her son a Surron e-motorcycle and knew that he drove it recklessly. Deputies warned her at that time that she could be charged if her son continued to ride.
That is a sworn law enforcement officer sitting across from a parent, laying out the specific consequences, giving her the information she needed to make a different choice.
She didn’t make a different choice.
A year later, her son was doing wheelies outside El Toro High School, and Ed Ashman was lying on the side of the road.
When deputies arrived at the home following the crash, Mejer told them that neither she nor her son owned a Surron, nor did they have access to one. The lie bought her nothing. The warrant was served. The arrest was made. And the DA’s office had her own prior admission on record.
The warning wasn’t just wasted. It became evidence.
What Mom Is Now Facing
Tommi Jo Mejer, 50, of Aliso Viejo, has been charged with one felony count of child endangerment, one felony count of accessory after the fact to a crime, one misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, one misdemeanor count of loaning a motor vehicle to an unlicensed driver, and one misdemeanor count of providing false information to a peace officer. She faces a maximum sentence of six years and eight months in state prison if convicted on all counts.
The teen faces hit-and-run and reckless driving charges.
And if Ed Ashman doesn’t make it home, everything gets significantly worse. The criminal charges escalate. And then comes the civil suit — where auto insurance almost certainly won’t cover an off-highway electric motorcycle operated illegally on a public road by an unlicensed minor. Whatever assets exist are now in play.
This Isn’t a New Problem. The Machines Are New.
Kids darting into traffic on bikes is nothing new. What’s new is what they’re riding.
The average recreational cyclist on a standard pedal bike travels somewhere between 10 and 15 mph. At that speed, most drivers can react. Most collisions, while serious, aren’t always fatal. And critically, a kid who misjudges a gap in traffic on a ten-speed is limited by physics — by their own legs.
The Surron Ultra Bee has no such limitation. It weighs roughly 110 pounds, produces instant torque, and can hit highway-adjacent speeds before a driver even registers it’s moving. A kid on a Surron can dart off a curb and be in the middle of a lane in under two seconds. There is no lag. No wind-up. No warning.
And here’s the legal trap nobody talks about: if a driver hits a kid on one of these bikes, who gets blamed? In most accident reconstructions, the car is presumed to be the dangerous party. The optics of a car versus a child almost always break the wrong way for the driver — even if the child rode directly into their path. Drivers are terrified of this. Rightfully so. And kids are exploiting that fear, sometimes deliberately.
Schools Are Already Moving
The Lake Forest incident didn’t create this problem — it just made it impossible to ignore. Newport Mesa Unified School District voted to ban e-bikes at all elementary and middle school campuses beginning in the 2026-27 school year, a decision that came just days after the crash. Menlo Park City School District has prohibited students under 16 from bringing e-bikes capable of exceeding 20 mph onto campus. In neighboring Costa Mesa, e-bike riders were found to be at fault in 44% of all bicycle accidents recorded in 2025.
The bans are a reaction, not a solution. The bikes are already out there, already in garages, already being ridden by kids who don’t know — or don’t care — that they’re operating a motorcycle.
What This Has to Do With Second Chances
We don’t write this to pile on a family that’s already burning.
We write it because this is what we see — in courtrooms, in corrections facilities, in the cases of the people we hire and advocate for. The system gives warnings. Officers knock on doors. Judges issue terms. Employers give one more shot.
A warning is a second chance delivered before the first chance fully runs out. And like all second chances, it can be wasted.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer made it plain: “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.”
We hope Ed Ashman comes home. He showed up every day for those kids at El Toro. He earned his way home from Vietnam. He deserves to make it back from this one too.
And if there is one thing we know from the work we do every day: the best way to avoid a conversation about second chances is to make the most of your first one.
Breaking Free Industries is a custom screen printing and embroidery shop based in Santa Ana, CA. Every order supports second-chance employment for people rebuilding after incarceration.
