Justice for Four Angels also calls for safety enhancements on Pacific Coast Highway
A local victims advocacy group initiated by three students and alumna of Pepperdine University is seeking to promote safety on PCH after the tragic accident that claimed four university seniors in October 2023. The group Justice for Four Angels says its aim is to give voice to the four young women who were killed and to help prevent further road tragedies in Malibu and beyond.
The group, with a growing presence on social media and which has spoken at Malibu City Council and Planning Commission meetings, was started last year by Billy Melcher, Lilly Bradshaw, and Bridget Thompson. Melcher, who is a Volunteer on Patrol (VOP) with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, serving in Malibu, was one of the first responders to the horrific scene on PCH Oct. 17, 2023. It’s a night he says changed him forever and became the catalyst to advocate for the four young women who are unable to advocate for themselves.
Justice for Four Angels, Melcher said, was started, “to support the families and friends of the four Pepperdine young women that were killed in the accident on PCH.”
“I’m a law student at Pepperdine and I’ve watched a lot of these kind of high-profile cases develop. And the common theme in all of them has been the more publicity these cases get, the more the focus shifts away from the victims and their families and their loss,” Melcher continued. “Their stories tend to get lost in the drama of the trial and the defendant and the lawyers and everything else. I’ve watched that happen again and again.
“So, our main mission amongst the three of us is to make sure that these women who have their voices taken from them, still have a voice in all of this, and that people remember what this is actually about and what happened to these families who are dealing with the grief of losing their kids and the stress of litigation. At times they may not have the strength to speak up or in some instances they can’t. So, we are here to give them a voice. That is our main mission.”
The group attends every court hearing, obtains court documents, and disseminates the information to the victims’ families and others. With only one family living in Southern California and the rest scattered throughout the country, the organizers say they are able to take some of the burden off family members who can’t travel to the Van Nuys courtroom for what’s often a five-minute hearing.
“It’s stuff that they don’t have the ability and energy to do. They can only fight so much because this is such a loss to their family,” said Bradshaw, a Pepperdine alum whose time at the university overlapped with those who were killed in the tragedy. “So, if we can take some of that burden off of them, that’s the least we can do. It’s these things that will help them continue to fight for Niamh, Asha, Deslyn, and Peyton.”
Thompson, another founder of the group, and a roommate with three of the victims, elaborated on her participation: “Over two years ago when I lost my best friends, it was such an immediate helpless feeling. From the very beginning, I jumped on the advocacy pretty quickly. I was reached out to by a lot of media outlets and different advocacy groups. It was a way I felt I could keep their names alive and make sure that my best friends’ names don’t die and that they didn’t die in vain.
“At the beginning, it was really focused on Pacific Coast Highway advocacy because that’s something that’s really important. It’s a dangerous road that has been dangerous for far too long. But as time has progressed and the court hearings have, it’s something I’ve also been super involved in. It’s easy for the defendant’s name or the attorney’s name to be in headlines and to kind of take over the story because it is a high-profile case. The attorney is a high-profile attorney. So, I just really want to make sure that their names don’t get lost and their stories don’t get lost because if they do, that’ll never be true justice for me.”
Melcher emphasized Justice for Four Angels also has been a consistent presence at Malibu City Council and Planning Commission meetings from the get-go.
“We were instrumental in getting the $55 million Caltrans safety plan passed,” he said. “We spoke at the planning commission meeting where one of the commissioners quoted one of the speeches we gave and then changed her vote to a yes, which is basically what got the thing passed. When it went to the City Council we spoke with the councilmembers. We had petitions on our social media accounts that went to the city for people to sign, to express their support, and that really carried this thing across the finish line. So, our role has been two-part, following the criminal case and also advocating for PCH safety.”