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Regular Cache in memory of a childhood friend
Monday, May 10, 1999
Pickup safety
Parents seeking to save teen-age lives
By DEON DAUGHERTY
Staff Writer
Billy Shelley played just about every position in city league baseball. The 16-year-old liked to flirt with the girls and goof around with his buddies. His school performance was about average, so his folks were using a course in driver’s education as a bargaining chip improve his grades.
One sunny afternoon in the middle of April, Billy was riding home from school in the back of a 1972 Chevrolet pickup. He noticed a bunch of girls in the next lane on South Treadaway; he poked at their car with a golf club to get their attention.
Police said the Cooper High School sophomore was leaning over the side of the truck when he fell out and hit his head on the pavement. Billy died a few days later after languishing in a coma at Hendrick Medical Center.
“Now that I look back, he would have been safer if he’d been behind the wheel,” his mother, Pam Shelley, said three weeks later.
Shelley is now planning to join forces with others lobbying to restrict anyone younger than 18 from riding in a pickup bed.
“I don’t think anyone should have even a dog in the back of a truck. It’s too dangerous,” Shelley said. “And Billy knew that. It was just a stupid accident.”
Parents driving new law
Current law prohibits anyone younger than 12 from riding in an uncovered truck bed if the vehicle is going more than 35 miles per hour. If approved, Senate Bill 411 will make it illegal for anyone younger than 18 to ride in the bed at any speed unless it’s an emergency, a farmer’s trip from one field to another or a family’s sole mode of transportation.
The bill was originally penned by Texas Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, five years ago at the urging of Lubbock mother Karen Slay.
Slay was moved to action after watching several reports of a Snyder accident in which eight children were killed when the truck they were riding in the back of was hit by an 18-wheeler.
The legislation made it through both the Senate and the House in 1995, but the session ended before it went to vote. In 1997, the bill died in committee. This year, Senate Bill 411 has made it through the Senate and awaits House approval. The session is over at the end of May, and Slay says time is now the group’s greatest foe.
But at 16, time seemed to be on Billy’s side. He was looking forward to taking agriculture courses next year and caring for his own sheep. He enjoyed driving go-carts, playing computer games, teasing the girls and aggravating his sister.
His future was wide open.
“He didn’t know what he wanted to do or be; he was still just being a kid,” his mother said, dabbing at tears.
Shelley wants the law changed so other parents’ children can grow up, she said.
“I’ll never have grandchildren from him. This will be the first Mother’s Day without him,” she said, clutching a picture of Billy in last year’s baseball uniform. “This will be our year of firsts.
“If that law had been passed … Billy would still be here.”
Texas obstacles
Slay said the legislation must overcome a rugged mentality that doesn’t see anything wrong with hopping in the back of a pickup and cruising down the road.
“People that buckle up their kids in a Suburban will throw them in back of a pickup to go to 7-11,” she said.
Parents need the new legislation to remind them that hanginng out of the bed of a pickup is dangerous, she said. It’s rare an actual accident causes the injuries.
Police said Billy’s fall was an accident; the driver wasn’t at fault.
“The injuries he had could’ve happened if the truck was stopped in a driveway,” said Sgt. Thad Carey in the Abilene Police Department traffic division, adding that additional legislation might not be the answer to stopping the injuries. Children are going to play and horse around whenever they want, he said.
Slay has heard the argument about legislating responsibility before, she said, and it doesn’t make much sense.
“I say, ‘You’re right, you can’t force responsibility,’ but legislation does promote responsibility, and it punishes those who refuse to accept that responsibility,” she said. “Most top protection laws are about parental responsibility, and I don’t see why this one is different.”
Now a Lubbock school board member, Slay has started “Kids Aren’t Cargo,” an advocacy group that has splintered across the country. Since she became involved in a nationwide campaign to teach about the dangers of traveling in a pickup bed, legislation prohibiting children to ride there in Louisiana and Hawaii has passed.
Although legislation with fines and jail time may not stop every kid from jumping in the bed of a pickup, it can sure help prevent injury, said Sparky Dean, public information officer for the Department of Public Safety.
“But by doing that, it will heighten public awareness of why it’s dangerous. Even high school students and their moms and dads are probably not aware of the dangers until something happens to the child,” he said. “This gives an extra tool to police officers” to prevent injury or death.
In 1997, three people younger than 20 were injured while traveling in the rear of a truck in Taylor County, according to DPS numbers; 1996 figures show five Taylor County youngsters injured.
Statewide in 1997, 339 people youth were injured; 24 people younger than 20 died. In 1996, that figure was at 25.
Most counties were represented by one death per county. Harris County exceeded the others with two deaths in 1997 and four in 1996. Six young people died from injuries suffered in similar Harris County accidents in 1995.
A family copes
A little more than three weeks after Billy died, his family’s cozy home on South 15th is crowded with lush potted plants where Tiger and Sissy, the family’s pet cats, like to sleep. The flowers spill onto out the front porch and the scent of memorial candles fills the house.
Billy shared a room with his younger sister, Beth, 13, who still cries herself to sleep. Shelley said she cries, too, and her husband, William, feels guilty for not being able to pick Billy up from school that day.
“There’s just a big hole, and nothing’s ever going to fill it up,” Shelley said. The entire family is in counseling.
Shelley said she wants to press the stricter law on pickup travel, and her testimony can move Texas lawmakers more than anything else, Slay said.
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My (Stungbythebugs wifey) best friend through out my school years. I thought this way is a neat way for him to be remembered. Please sign the baseball and place back into the cache. Please inform us when the baseball or signature book needs to be replaced. Please leave items for the cache that a 16 year old boy would enjoy. Leave the Woody pen and baseball please! Please be sure and place the cache back just as you found it so the next cacher will have as much fun finding it.
The coordinates have been fixed. The ones above are right.
Original cache items:
Baseball and sharpie pen, woody pen and log book, 2 decks of cards, 3 caribeeners, 2 shot glasses, 2 parachute men, and a condom. lol please do not return the condom!
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)