Durham mourns long-time employee, Renaissance man killed while biking

John Allore was riding his bicycle around 7 a.m. when he was was hit from behind, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety. Coworkers believe Allore was on his way to work at the time.

Karen Denisse Maldonado, 26, of Efland arrested and charged with failure to reduce speed to include misdemeanor death by motor vehicle.

Allore, 59, was promoted to budget director in 2021. According to the city of Durham website, he’d worked for the city for nearly 25 years.

"I feel like John was an amazing public servant. He had been with the city a long, long time," said Councilman Javiera Caballero.

"Finance and budget can be topics that can be hard. He was great at explaining things for us, answering questions, just super-professional also really caring."

Durham council member Leonardo Williams made the news public Thursday on Twitter, tweeting "Pray For Durham."

"He was a long-distance rider, an actor, a comedian, author, documentarian. He was a jack of all trades," Williams said.

Allore also had a crime blog, "Who Killed Theresa," devoted to his sister and started a podcast in 2017 with the same title.

A television special on the hunt for his sister’s killer was set to air Friday night in Canada.

Dan Spector, a television producer for Global TV network in Canada, worked Allore with him on a weekly true crime show.

"He grew up here in Montreal," Spector said after learning of the death.

"He would make people feel heard. He did investigations into so many other cases too. He had this insatiable desire to help people shine light on dark stories," Spector said.

A documentary they worked on together was set to premiere Friday.

"We just did this whole documentary about him, about his work, shining light on all this good work he did, then the day before it premieres he is killed in a tragic way, it's hard to fathom, so devastating," Spector said.

At-large council member Jillian Johnson wrote, "It’s crazy to talk about John in the past tense. He worked for the city for 24 years, as long as I’ve lived in Durham. He was friendly, funny, kind, helpful, and so dedicated to making sure our budget reflected our values and our community needs. We are all going to miss him."

"I was thinking about the city staff who have become family," Caballero said. "It will be a challenging budget season for those involved in that work."

The city is required to pass a budget by June 30.

During a council meeting, Holsey-Hyman was accused of offering a developer support for a project if that developer donated to her campaign. Separately, Holsey-Hyman was accused of engaging a city staffer in campaign-related work.