Orange County prosecutors filed involuntary manslaughter charges Friday against Tommi Jo Mejer after her 14-year-old son, riding an unlicensed electric motorcycle, struck and killed 81-year-old Ed Ashman last month in Lake Forest. The case marks the latest in a series of California prosecutions that seek to hold parents criminally liable for deaths caused by children operating powerful e-motorcycles illegally.
According to authorities, the boy was doing wheelies on a Surron e-motorcycle on April 16 when he hit Ashman, a former U.S. Marine Corps captain who was walking home from his job as a substitute teacher at a local high school. Ashman was critically injured and died May 1, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.
Mejer, of Aliso Viejo, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, felony child endangerment, felony accessory after the fact, and misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and providing false information to a peace officer. She had not appeared in court as of Friday, and no public defender was listed in court records.
District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement that Mejer “essentially handed her 14-year-old son a deadly weapon, and despite multiple warnings of the dangers, continued to let him illegally ride an e-motorcycle until he finally killed someone.”
Prosecutors said Mejer called the Sheriff’s Department in June 2025 to complain that someone was posting pictures of her son riding the e-motorcycle. In a recorded interaction, she told deputies she bought the vehicle and “knew that he drove it recklessly.” Deputies warned her she could face criminal charges for allowing the boy to ride it illegally.
Under California law, a bike is classified as an e-motorcycle if it has an electric motor exceeding 750 watts or can reach speeds above 20 mph without pedaling. Riders must be at least 16 years old and hold a motorcycle license. The Surron model in the case is capable of speeds up to 56 mph, according to the manufacturer.
In the hours after the April collision, prosecutors said, Mejer told deputies that neither she nor her son owned a Surron e-motorcycle or had access to one, a statement contradicted by her earlier body-camera comments and the purchase of the vehicle.
The district attorney’s office declined to discuss whether the boy will face prosecution because it is a juvenile case. Orange County prosecutors have filed child endangerment charges against three parents this year for letting children ride e-motorcycles illegally, and in Contra Costa County, parents were charged after their child crashed into a minivan.
Lawrence Rosenthal, a law professor at Chapman University, said the legal theory behind charging parents with manslaughter in e-motorcycle deaths is novel. “This is a very new theory. There’s not a long, robust history,” he said. While prosecutors have successfully pursued parental liability in shootings committed by minors, he said, firearms represent a “far easier-to-grasp threat to human life.” In e-motorcycle cases, prosecutors must show that parents knew the risk and that a fatal collision was “reasonably foreseeable,” he added. “Is it reasonably foreseeable that a child’s going to kill somebody?” Rosenthal said, highlighting the legal hurdle.