GUELPH — Somebody, somewhere, knows what happened to Lucas Shortreed.
Maybe they were a passenger in the car that struck and killed the Fergus teen on that country dark night just outside Guelph two years ago.
Maybe they were someone told after the fact: perhaps frightened teenagers anxious to tell friends about a panicked event on the way home from a party the night before.
Or maybe the only person that really knows what happened that night is the one who was behind the wheel of the older white Dodge Neon that slammed into Shortreed, 18, as he wandered toward his Fergus home from a late-night party.
Perhaps this weekend, like Shortreed’s family and friends, that person will spend time thinking about the boy left for dead at the side of the road.
He was found roughly 20 minutes after being hit. He had been walking on the south shoulder of County Road 17 near Ariss.
Thanksgiving is no longer a happy family time for Shortreed’s mom Judie Moore, his sister, Jenneen, and brothers, Marcus and Christopher Shortreed. It likely never will be again.
“It’s not a happy occasion for us, that’s for sure,” says Moore. “It’s just pulling together and trying to remember. Even if they find the person that did it, it’s never going to stop.”
It is not just Moore and her extended family that deal with the loss. In a small town like Fergus, it is a community that grieves.
“We all just really want an answer and are frustrated that nobody has come forward and admitted to it,” Moore says.
Wherever the family goes they are asked for updates. When Marcus — Lucas’s closest sibling in age and life — goes to a party, to strangers he is “Lucas’s brother.” Moore is “Lucas’s mom.”
“I know Marcus has struggled. He’s struggling right now and I don’t think he even knows why,” Moore says.
“It’s hard to talk about it all the time, but if nobody ever spoke of him or remembered Lucas, that would be tragic. That would be worse.”
Police have chased countless leads over the last two years. A $50,000 reward remains posted for tips that would break open the case. Billboards bearing Lucas’s face still stand beside Highway 6 asking for help. The side of a transport trailer circles the province carrying the same message.
This weekend information leaflets will be distributed at county RIDE checks.
“We’re still looking and we will keep looking,” says OPP Const. Pat Gonzalez, the lead investigator in the case. “We just haven’t had that one tip that’s going to help us out and get closure on this.”
Judging by pieces of glass and paint left at the scene of the crime, police know they are looking for a 1995-97 white Dodge Neon. They have checked thousands of leads and tips over the past two years, tips that still roll in.
“There’s always that hope that one day that tip will come in. I never give up hope.”
Gonzalez recalls a similar case in Sauble Beach where it was over four years before police received the tip crucial to solving the case.
“We definitely need the public’s help. The vehicle’s out there somewhere, and once we find the vehicle we can find who had the vehicle,” the veteran OPP officer says.
This weekend OPP officers manning various RIDE program locations will be handing out flyers with details of Shortreed’s death, trying to twig memories.
“It’s absolutely frustrating and it’s unfair to have someone taken from us,” says sister Jenneen Shortreed. “To lose someone and have no recourse. No closure. It’s extremely frustrating.”
Lucas’s grandfather Gerald Shortreed holds out hope.
“I haven’t given up. Sometimes I doubt it, but somebody knows something I’m sure and I think the day will come when something will leak out.”
Shortreed was a 6-foot-3, 230-pound gregarious goofball described as a “Big Bear” by his grandfather.
“He was a good, jolly kid. Always happy and joking around. A carefree boy,” Gerald Shortreed says.
In Facebook photos he’s the one wearing the funny hat or the silly mask. He once made a pretend marriage proposal to a co-worker at Dairy Queen while using an onion ring as an engagement ring.
“Lucas was a pretty cool guy and always put a smile on my face. He put other needs in front of his own. He was very caring and enjoyed to joke around,” says Fabian Haegi, a former schoolmate of Shortreed’s, at Centre Wellington District High School and the creator of one of two memorial Facebook pages.
Shortreed touched many in his short life.
His mom recalls how he ran a gardening club for residents of Wellington Terrace nursing home, then hosted a dinner for its members at the end of the season.
“He didn’t even tell me about that. He bought all the food himself — even tablecloths,” his mom says. “I think that’s the thing I’ve learned most about Luke after what happened, just how loved he was.”
Lucas Shortreed lives on in the memories of hundreds that knew him.
He must also live on in the memory of the person responsible for his death.
His family and others express hope that that memory someday pushes that person, or someone who knows them, to come forward.
“In this day and age, it’s pretty hard to be invisible,” his mom says. “You would think that people would put two and two together. It’s hard to believe that the person that did this was such a loner, that nobody would even notice. Somebody stopped driving that car.”
Shortreed’s grandfather concurs.
“All we would really like, is if we knew what happened. For that person to come forward and give us some closer,” his grandfather says. “Right now, we have no answers.”