LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Lubbock residents may see a stop sign at 42nd and Memphis and think nothing of it.
For Melissa Bond, it symbolizes something much greater.
“This is where he took his last breath,” Melissa said. “This is where our life as we knew it ended.”
Melissa is referring to her son, Timothy.
“Everybody that talks about him says he was goofy, one-of-a-kind, and unapologetically himself,” Melissa said. “He would make someone laugh and that laughter was infectious.”
Timothy’s life came to end on March 6th of this year. Lubbock police were called out to a hit-and-run motorcycle crash around 6 p.m. Melissa says he was coming home from the grocery store when a driver blew through a stop sign at the intersection. Timothy tried to lay the bike down to avoid being hit, but his brakes locked up and he crashed.
He was just 33 years old.
“That night, he called me and our last words together were ‘I love you mama’, and I was like ‘I love you too, baby’” Melissa said. “It’s very hard to have to go back and find his audio messages to me and his videos to replay it and fill up the silence.”
Additional stop signs have since been added, making the area a four-way stop. Melissa says the other person involved has not been criminally charged at this time, and a civil lawsuit continues in the non-contact hit and run.
“I try to keep busy, but life really ended for me that day,” Melissa said. “It stopped. It’s just trying to help that it doesn’t happen to someone else.”
That’s why Melissa created ‘The VALOR Project’. Its mission brings riders, survivors, families and advocates together to honor the lives lost as a result of reckless driving. Melissa will meet with lawmakers and advocacy groups next week in Austin to help kickstart the project and push for stronger traffic laws.
Before that happens, Melissa is hosting the first ever ‘Road to Austin’ ride in honor of Timothy. Riders will meet in the At Home store parking lot at 10 a.m. This ride will feature Timothy’s favorite route, and end at the United Valor Motorcycle Clubhouse.
“We just want to make sure with the ride this Saturday that Tim wasn’t forgotten, and we’re not stopping anytime soon,” Melissa said.
Everyone is welcome to join in and help honor Timothy’s legacy.
“It was a pleasure to know him, a privilege to be close to him,” Melissa said. “We are all grateful for the time we had with him.”
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