After Jesse died, the criminal case against the teen who ran over him moved slowly through the system. Because the case involved a juvenile, there were strict limits on what we could say and when we could say it. We were grieving in public, but we couldn’t tell the full story in public.
During that time, we learned how the law treated what happened to Jesse. We learned that no one had any legal duty to call 911, and that there would be no consequences for the people who walked away. We also learned how isolating it is when the system tells you to be quiet while it “does its work.”
While the case moved along, we started building Jesse’s Justice in the background. We connected with other grieving families, started drafting ideas for a bystander law, and tried to figure out how to turn our anger and heartbreak into something useful. We stayed quieter than we wanted to, but the work had already begun.