Mom faces involuntary manslaughter after son’s e-motorcycle crash kills man | California
A Southern California woman faces an additional involuntary manslaughter charge after an 81-year-old man died from injuries sustained when the woman’s teenage son crashed while riding an e-motorcycle, prosecutors said Friday.
On April 16, Tommi Jo Mejer’s 14-year-old son crashed into Ed Ashman while he was behind the wheel of his Surron e-motorcycle, according to prosecutors. Ashman, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, was walking home from his job as a substitute teacher at a high school in Lake Forest.
He was critically injured and died Thursday, and Mejer, of Aliso Viejo in Orange County, was charged with involuntary manslaughter in addition to a previous charge of child endangerment.
“This mother essentially gave her 14-year-old son a deadly weapon and, despite multiple warnings about the dangers, continued to allow him to illegally ride an e-motorcycle until he eventually killed someone,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement.
Mejer has not yet appeared in court and there was no public defender listed for him. The district attorney’s office provided The Associated Press with the name of a private attorney who could represent Mejer; That person did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Mejer was also charged with felony accessory after the fact and misdemeanor charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and providing false information to an officer. He could be sentenced to up to 7 years and 8 months in prison if convicted of all counts, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said in June 2025, Mejer called the sheriff’s department and complained that someone was posting photos of her son riding an e-motorcycle. In an interaction with deputies recorded by his body camera, he said he purchased the vehicle and “knew he was driving it carelessly.”
Prosecutors said he was warned by deputies that he could face criminal charges for allowing him to enter the vehicle illegally.
If a bike has an electric motor with more than 750 watts of power or can reach speeds in excess of 32 km/h (20mph) without the need to pedal, it is classified as an e-motorcycle under state law. Drivers must be at least 16 years old and have a motorcycle licence.
The boy’s e-motorcycle is the 2025 Surron Ultra Bee, which can reach a top speed of 90 km/h (56mph). by manufacturer.
In the hours after the April collision, Mejer told deputies that neither he nor his son owned or had access to a Surron e-motorcycle, prosecutors said.
The district attorney’s office said because this is a juvenile case, it cannot discuss whether the child will be prosecuted.
Orange County prosecutors this year filed child endangerment charges against three parents for allowing children to illegally ride e-motorcycles. In Northern California’s Contra Costa County, a lawsuit was also filed against parents whose children crashed into a minivan.
Lawrence Rosenthal, a law professor at Chapman University, said that in the past, prosecutions of parents often occurred in truancy cases because the law specifically states parents’ responsibilities.
However, parental criminal liability in other cases has begun to receive attention in recent years, particularly in prosecutions and convictions for shootings committed by minors.
“This is a very new theory. It doesn’t have a long, solid history,” Rosenthal said.
In shooting cases, prosecutors must prove that the parent committed some type of act of “criminal negligence” that led to the death, such as gaining access to a gun, according to Rosenthal.
But the legal theories used in e-motorcycle cases may be harder to prove, Rosenthal said. Prosecutors will have to show that parents knew about the risks involved in allowing their children to use e-motorcycles and that firearms pose a “much easier to comprehend threat to human life.”
“Is it reasonably foreseeable that a child would kill someone?” Rosenthal said.
Associated Press contributed reporting
