Leader Staff
Timothy Meade
Leader Photo by Tim Ryan Timothy Meade’s sisters, Autumn Edwards and Bobbie Jo Knaus, are embraced by Meade’s mother, Eileen Edwards, at a balloon release in Meade’s memory on the state Highway 29 overpass of County Road M in Richmond where Meade died one year ago.
Leader Photo by Tim Ryan Balloons launched in Timothy Meade’s honor float away from the state Highway 29 overpass of County Road M in Richmond where Meade died one year ago.
Balloons bearing messages of love and remembrance wafted up into the cloudy skies over state Highway 29 Saturday afternoon, sent aloft by family and friends of a Michigan man from the spot where he died one year ago.
“We just wrote little messages to him, little love letters to him,” said his mother, Eileen Edwards.
Timothy J. Meade, 22, of Stephenson, Mich., was found at 2:30 a.m. June 28, 2013, in the eastbound lane of traffic on County Road M at the Highway 29 overpass.
The case remains unsolved.
If Edwards could talk to the driver, she said there is only one thing she would say.
“What happened?”
Shawano County sheriff’s detectives have been able to piece together a few facts.
Meade had been visiting friends in the area and was headed back to their residence after leaving a nearby drinking establishment, they said. He left the establishment sometime after 1:30 a.m. Several witnesses reported seeing him walking.
Detectives determined Meade was struck sometime between 1:30 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. by an SUV or large vehicle that would have been headed eastbound on County Road M.
Autopsy results indicate Meade was lying down in the road at the time he was struck.
At a news conference prior to the balloon release, Sheriff Randy Wright detailed some of the investigative work that has been done over the past year, including “watching traffic patterns, witness interviews, checking video at car washes and repair shops, and checking tens of vehicles.”
But, Wright said, “we have no firm leads at this time.”
Wright implored the driver of the vehicle or anyone with information to come forward for the sake of the family.
“As with anyone who loses a loved one, they want closure to what happened and why it happened,” he said.
Wright, as well as lead investigator on the case, Detective Wade Wudtke, had previously said they did not expect any charges to be filed.
They previously speculated the driver might not have seen Meade given the dark conditions and the crest of the bridge at that location.
But Wright said Saturday he couldn’t rule charges out.
“I’m not going to say there’s no penalties or charges that may be coming, but it may not be as bad as what you think or have in your mind if you come in and talk to us,” he said. “We need to have the facts to determine the next step.”
The Sheriff’s Department can be reached at 715-526-3111.