On the street near St. Paul’s Lake Phalen where a driver struck an 83-year-old pedestrian and left the scene, officers found no evidence to solve the hit-and-run: No witnesses, no surveillance footage, no damaged remnants of the vehicle, no skid marks.
But there were signs of the force that took John Bidon’s life. One of his shoes was thrown off and found in a yard. One of his hearing aids was knocked out and located in the intersection. One of his sons found the remnants of his blood in the street.
A year later, Bidon’s family is still looking for answers and they’re asking anyone with clues to come forward. Police said last week that they’re taking another look at the case to see if there are any other avenues to be explored.
“It’s hard to fathom there’s just not one lead,” said son Mike Bidon. He thinks every day about memories of his dad and about what happened.
Jayne Bidon, Mike’s wife, said when they run into friends they haven’t seen for awhile, they ask, “You still haven’t heard anything?”
“And then we talk about, ‘How is this person living with themselves?’” she said. “You know, the weight that they have on their shoulders. You’d think they would want to get that off their back, and it would help us to know what happened because there’s just so many questions.”
Bidon was one of four pedestrians killed in St. Paul last year and his is the only case that wasn’t solved. In most situations, drivers stay at the scene. There have been three fatal pedestrian crashes in the city this year and the drivers were identified in each, according to police.
“What makes it so difficult is there was no witness to it,” said Sgt. Jason Neubrand, who investigated the Bidon case. Police had no description of a suspect vehicle to go on. “A couple of neighbors heard a loud noise but didn’t see anything. … Usually with a crash, there’ll be part of a grille or part of the headlight or taillight or something left behind, and there was nothing.”
The department’s forensic services unit processed the scene. Neubrand was there the night of the crash and returned in the daytime, but no one found evidence.
It’s a residential area, and there aren’t city cameras. Surveillance cameras at one home didn’t capture the crash. Another resident had a Ring camera that wasn’t pointed toward the site of the collision, according to a police report.
Still, the case could be solved “with the smallest piece of information,” said Alyssa Arcand, a department spokeswoman. Police and the family are urging anyone with information to come forward. The family is offering a reward of $1,000 for justice in the case.
East Side staple
Bidon was struck at Arlington Avenue and McAfee Street, three blocks from his home and two blocks from Lake Phalen.
He and his wife, Josephine, moved into their Arlington Avenue home more than 58 years earlier. They were married for about 60 years when she died in 2021.
“He was old school,” Mike Bidon said of his father. “Just a hard worker — around the house, taking us kids to sports, working at 3M. He was a staple of the East Side.”
For 30 years, Bidon took daily runs around Lake Phalen. He’d stretch it out to five miles and run one of the miles backward to work other muscles.
Bidon remained mentally sharp and active.
He and friends from Mechanic Arts High School went out for “The Breakfast Club” once a month and he’d have lunch with his retired friends from 3M weekly. The year before, he took a trip to Mexico with his best friend and they were talking about going again in the spring.
What brought him out that night?
Bidon’s family doesn’t know why he was out the night of Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, and police didn’t determine why, either.
He was struck about 7:30 p.m., after the sun had set. The weather was pleasant, with the temperature around 60 degrees.
Mike and Jayne Bidon had not heard from John that he was regularly taking walks, though an employee at his bank later said he told her he’d started going for walks again.
John Bidon loved being outside.
“He put a ton of work” into his house, yard and garden, probably spending 80 hours a week on them in the nice weather, son Patrick Bidon said last year.
He planted flowers around the house and the garage, and was always watering his grass and mowing it. “I’m not exaggerating at all — he had the greenest grass probably in most of St. Paul for most of the years,” Patrick Bidon said.
On his last day, it appeared John Bidon had been composting his garden, said Patrick Bidon, who found a piece of tape his dad left behind. “He worked at 3M, so he’d always use tape to tie up the bags,” his son said recently.
It didn’t look like he’d rushed out of his house because the door was locked and nothing was out of place.
John Bidon’s family looked for other clues and asked the medical examiner’s office if his blood work showed he’d been having a diabetic emergency. They were told he had not been, Jayne Bidon said.
Stop signs added a block away
After Bidon’s death, his family needed to go to his pharmacy and credit union to wrap up matters. At the pharmacy, employees who knew him reacted with, “No, not John!” and said they were going to miss his smile and friendliness.
At the bank, they heard John Bidon sometimes brought in his laptop for help with online banking or figuring out a laptop problem.
Friends of Mike Bidon told him, “He was the dad I never had.”
“Hearing those stories really warm our hearts,” Jayne Bidon said.
It’s not known which way John Bidon or the vehicle that struck him were traveling. His family thinks the driver was westbound on Arlington Avenue because people “pick up a lot of speed and then you go down a hill, and that’s where my dad was struck, toward the bottom of the hill” leading to Lake Phalen, Mike Bidon said.
The city has added stop signs on Arlington Avenue at Clarence Street, a block from the crash site, making it a four-way stop. Previously, there were only stop signs on Clarence Street.
St. Paul’s Public Works Department received a request for the change. It wasn’t known last week if the request was related to what happened to Bidon.
Family’s frustration
Bidon’s family saw Sgt. Neubrand on Oct. 25 to get John Bidon’s house keys, which he’d had in his pocket. Jayne Bidon said she asked him then, “When can we get this out in the media?”
Neubrand wrote in a report that he’d asked a public information officer on Oct. 24 to get out the word. The police department’s public information officers posted on Facebook on Oct. 28, nine days after the crash, asking for people to come forward with tips. There was subsequent media attention.
Jayne and Mike Bidon said they’re frustrated because they think immediate public attention could have resulted in tips. They’ve seen other hit-and-run cases in the news more quickly and they wonder why John’s case wasn’t.
The police department tries to exhaust leads before asking the public for help and looks for information that could aid in the search, such as the type or color of a suspect vehicle, said Arcand, the police spokeswoman.
Jayne Bidon last talked to the investigator in January and Mike Bidon spoke to him before that, and they said they were upset about not being kept up to date on the investigation.
After recently reading the police reports, they said they’re left feeling that more could have been done. They asked why police reports don’t indicate that officers talked to Bidon’s neighbors to try to piece together more of his night.
They also point to a request that a different officer sent to T-Mobile to preserve information from the cellphone of the “deceased male,” but it refers to Mike Bidon instead of John Bidon and lists Mike’s phone number instead of John’s.
John Bidon did not have his phone with him when he was struck. Patrick Bidon said he looked over his father’s phone and didn’t find clues about that night.
Patrick Bidon figured police had run out of leads and done all they could.
Neubrand said he was frustrated that, due to the lack of evidence, he couldn’t find the driver who struck John Bidon.
“You want to help the families as much as you can,” he said. “… You want to see an end to the case as well.”
‘We miss him dearly’
In addition to Bidon’s two sons, he is survived by three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
“We miss him dearly at all the holidays, birthday parties,” Patrick Bidon said. “My father and I teased each other every time we talked to each other. I called him Walter for Walter Matthau from ‘Grumpy Old Men,’” the 1993 movie that was filmed in St. Paul.
When it had been six months since John Bidon was killed, Mike and Jayne Bidon organized a run around Lake Phalen to get the unsolved case out in the public eye again.
They also wanted to “bring up happy memories” of their family’s time at the lake, Mike Bidon said. They asked people to wear John Bidon’s favorite colors: maroon and gold for the Gophers; purple for the Vikings.
Since John Bidon was so often in his yard, people walking to or from Lake Phalen would always chat with him.
“Neighbors still stop by and talk about him, and it’s really nice to see how many people have not forgotten him,” Patrick Bidon said.
Even if the driver doesn’t come forward, John Bidon’s family figures there’s a chance that he or she told someone what happened.
Being able to find out more “would be some closure,” Patrick Bidon said. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions.”
Street safety and how to help
Anyone with information about the John Bidon hit-and-run is asked to call St. Paul police Sgt. Jason Neubrand at 651-266-5722.
Minnesota’s Office of Traffic Safety reminds:
• Drivers must stop for pedestrians crossing the street. Treat every corner and intersection as a crosswalk, whether it’s marked or unmarked, and let pedestrians cross.
• Pedestrians must obey traffic-control devices, such as traffic lights, signs and barricades.
The state’s Department of Transportation gives these tips for drivers:
• Look in all directions before turning.
• Watch for people walking, day or night.
• Be alert and expect to see people walking everywhere.
• Slower speeds save lives.
• Before passing stopped vehicles, check for people crossing.
And tips for pedestrians:
• Cross in well-lit areas when possible.
• Be alert and look for vehicles before crossing.
• Stand clear of parked cars and obstacles before crossing.
• Look and continue to look for vehicles in all lanes of traffic when crossing.
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