In a city where the “state flower” is a crumpled Ford F-150 bumper, Lubbock has once again proven that the only thing more dangerous than our intersections is the bureaucracy tasked with patrolling them. Jordyn Dabelstein, a 22-year-old student with the audacity to actually stop at a red light on Texas Tech Parkway, was rear-ended by 81-year-old Jimmy Boyett. Jimmy was piloting his Ford truck at a “high rate of speed”—which is West Texas speak for “aiming for low-earth orbit”—sending Jordyn’s car through the intersection and, eventually, Jordyn to an early grave.
But don’t worry, the Texas Tech Police Department is on the case, or at least they were until they got bored. According to the family, TTPD’s initial strategy was to tell them it was a “medical emergency,” declare the case closed, and stop answering the phone. It’s a bold investigative move: why bother with a blood test for the driver who just obliterated a student when you can just take his word for it that he “possibly blacked out”? Science is hard; taking a nap in the precinct is easy.
Naturally, the family isn’t thrilled about being ghosted by the people in tan uniforms. They’ve had to do the actual police work themselves, digging up dashcam footage of the truck driving like a GTA protagonist and finding an independent witness who—plot twist—was an off-duty LPD officer. That officer reportedly told the family that TTPD’s handling of the scene was “flippant” and definitely not how real cops do things. But hey, when has a lack of professionalism ever stopped a Lubbock institution from patting itself on the back?
TTPD eventually released a statement claiming they are protecting the “integrity of the investigation” and acting with “utmost sensitivity.” In local government terms, that usually translates to: “We realized the family has a lawyer now, so we’re going to pretend we weren’t trying to sweep this under the rug like dust during a haboob.” Meanwhile, the Dabelstein family is left prying information out of a department that seems to treat empathy like a foreign language they have no interest in learning.
If you can’t trust an 81-year-old in a three-ton tank to see a red light, and you can’t trust the campus police to answer a phone call, who can you trust in this town?
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