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Memorial ride honors bicyclist killed by logging truck

Organizers said taking the same route was their way of raising awareness about safety on the roadways for both bicyclists and motorists.

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RALEIGH, N.C. — Dozens of friends, family and supporters turned out for a memorial bicycle ride Wednesday evening in honor of Steven Laverne Jordan, the head of the state agency who was killed in a Fourth of July collision with a logging truck.

Jordan was an avid bike rider and a member of a bike riding club in the Triangle.

The riders gathered in Northeast Raleigh for a two-mile ride to the scene where Jordan was hit by the truck while riding his bike. Friends said it was a route on Louisburg Road, near Perry Creek Road, that Jordan, 49, took hundreds of times.

Organizers said taking the same route was their way of raising awareness about safety on the roadways for both bicyclists and motorists.

Jordan, who headed the state Division of Mental Health's Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services, was laid to rest last weekend.

"He prayed while he was riding. He planned while he was riding. He contemplated what was going on while he was riding," said Jordan's wife, Angela Jordan. "He truly enjoyed it."

 

Police said Jordan was killed when the empty logging truck hit him from behind. The truck driver, Clifton Paul Ellis Jr., 28, of 1715 Richardson Bass Road in Kenly, was charged with misdemeanor death by vehicle and failure to reduce speed to avoid a collision.

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