Welcome to Lubbock, where the only thing flatter than the landscape is the police department’s transparency. We’ve got another tragic “oopsie” on our hands, this time at the corner of Texas Tech Parkway and Indiana Avenue. On Saturday night, Jordyn Dabelstein—a 22-year-old nursing student who actually had a promising future elsewhere—was sitting at a red light when she was rear-ended by a three-quarter-ton truck. Because, of course, it was a truck. In this town, if you aren’t driving a vehicle the size of a small duplex, are you even trying?
The impact was enough to break her back in three places and sever her spinal cord, ultimately leading to her death on Tuesday. But don’t worry, the Texas Tech Police Department is on the case! Or maybe it’s Lubbock PD. Actually, it depends on who you ask and what time of day it is. According to Jordyn’s family, the two departments are currently engaged in a high-stakes game of “Not It,” passing the blame back and forth like a hot potato made of gross negligence.
While the family was begging for scraps of information and justice, local news was busy reporting on… well, probably a new Chick-fil-A opening or a particularly dusty sunset. It took a GoFundMe and a social media riot to get a peep out of KLBK, who finally secured a statement from TTPD that basically reads: “Something happened, someone died, we’re ‘investigating,’ and here’s a generic condolence card we keep in the top drawer for these exact occasions.”
The real mystery? The driver of that 3/4-ton truck. In a town where you can get a ticket for breathing too loud near a residential zone, the police are suddenly playing the “No Comment” card regarding who actually plowed into a stopped car at 9:00 PM. Is the driver a donor’s kid? A city official’s nephew? Or just another Lubbock “Legend” who thinks red lights are merely suggestions for the weak?
I guess we’ll just have to wait for the “investigation” to conclude, which in Lubbock time, usually means right around the time the heat death of the universe occurs.
Who knew that “Raider Power” actually meant the power to make an entire investigation disappear into a cloud of West Texas dust?
