Keagan Spencer had towing in his blood.
“The kid was literally born and then put in a child seat in his grandpa’s tow truck,” says Matt Spencer, Keagan’s father and owner of Matt Spencer Towing. “He had been around towing since pretty much day one.”
It was no surprise when Keagan followed in his family’s footsteps by becoming a third-generation tow operator. Though still a young man, he was already building a life — he was engaged to his fiancee, Olivia Kain, and they had two children, Lenora and Ryker.
Keagan opened his own company, Towzilla, with his best friend. He worked hard to establish himself in the towing community, but he always had time for his family. One of his greatest joys was spending weekends at Silver Lake with Olivia and their children.
“Then came November 4, 2023,” Matt Spencer says. “That was the day that changed my life.”
Keagan had stopped his truck on a median to help a lost dog. A speeding driver crossed into the median and hit him. “My son was struck at nearly 80 miles an hour,” says Spencer. “He was 25 years old when he died.”
Records show that the driver, 18-year-old Payton Ferris, was on his phone 13 seconds before the accident. In court, Keagan’s family — and even the judge — admonished Ferris’s mother for filming a video while driving and posting it to social media. The video begins with the woman saying that what she’s doing is “not terribly legal, but it’s just me in my car, so it’s only me at risk.”
Despite the fact that Ferris was speeding and distracted at the time of the accident, he was only charged with a misdemeanor moving violation causing death. The crime carries a maximum punishment of one year in jail, but Ferris was sentenced to probation.
Payton Ferris is free to go home to his family, but Keagan’s loved ones still feel the indescribable weight of his loss.
“Keagan’s passing definitely hit home to my whole family,” says Brent Baker, Operations Manager at Jerry’s Towing and Recovery and a friend of Keagan’s. “Keagan was a hard worker, and he was just getting started with his partnership business and thriving there.”
Baker says that while tow truck drivers help stranded drivers get out of trouble, they deal with incredible hazards on a daily basis. “There are close calls a lot of us face,” he explains. “There’s no safe position when we’re doing our job. We’ve got to worry about our own safety, too. We’ve got to get ourselves home at the end of the day.”
Keagan had previously documented some of those close calls. His family shared a video that Keagan had posted to social media prior to his death. It shows cars whizzing by within inches of his truck as he loads a disabled vehicle. “Nobody gets over,” he says. His words would prove to be tragically prophetic.
“Keagan Spencer was out doing his job. Roadside workers are out doing their jobs. People are taking technology that’s been implemented into these new vehicles, and it’s being abused and causing distractions, which is causing loss of life,” says Keagan’s mother, Miko Alisha. “I feel his presence. We feel his energy. But it’s left a hole in two little kids’ hearts.”
Like the families of countless other people killed by distracted drivers, Keagan’s loved ones have felt the overpowering sense of helplessness that so often comes with tragic and unjust losses. However, they are taking that feeling and using it to advocate for change.
Keagan’s family is working with Move Over Michigan, an organization that raises awareness of the dangers roadside workers face and lobbies for stricter move-over laws.
By putting faces like Keagan’s to the movement, Move Over Michigan and Keagan’s family hope to help the public understand that these laws aren’t just something to grudgingly follow; they’re a matter of life and death.
“I wake up almost every day and I think about what I could have done to have saved my son’s life,” his father says. “That’s what motivates me today. That’s why we’re telling Keagan’s story.”
