The flowers, votive candles and notes in front of Chip’s Place say a lot about how friends and customers felt about Marvin Webb.
But it is the bright-blue bowling ball with a spatula and cooking spoon jutting from the finger holes that hints at what was important to him.
“He had been cooking for a long time in different places. He always wanted to have something of his own,” said Christine LaCrue, 40, Webb’s sister.
Marvin “Chip” Webb, 42, was a cook who realized a lifelong dream to own a restaurant when he opened Chip’s Place in Lafayette in August.
The dream shattered Tuesday when, while riding his bike home from an evening of bowling, he collided with a bus at City Center Circle and South Public Road in Lafayette.
He died Wednesday.
It was the third fatal accident involving an RTD bus in four days. Dustin Peletier and Carla Miranda, both 29, died after a bus ran a light in downtown Denver on Saturday. The driver, Tidenekiyalesh Hawariyat, 30, faces 13 misdemeanor charges in the accident. She is a contract driver employed by Veolia Transportation.
On Monday, 78-year-old Clinton Grider died after he was run over by an RTD bus at an Aurora stop.
Regional Transportation District officials Thursday said the accidents were “contrary to our overall safety record,” noting that from 2007 until last week, RTD vehicles had been involved in only one at-fault fatal accident.
The accidents are under investigation, and drivers in the Aurora and Lafayette collisions have not been charged yet.
The bus driver involved in the Lafayette crash has worked for RTD for seven years and had a clean driving record, RTD spokesman Scott Reed said.
Webb, who had stopped at a Taco Bell for supper after bowling Tuesday, collided with a bus that was turning left onto South Public Road as he rode east across City Center Circle.
Even as a child, Webb loved to cook, said his mother, Marjorie, 68. “He used to bring me breakfast in bed when he was just a little kid.”
He worked at hotels before landing a job at Chip’s Cafe on South Boulder Road in Lafayette. When Chip’s Cafe, which was owned by someone else, closed last summer, he took his ambitions to a spot on North Public Road and christened it Chip’s Place.
On Thursday, friends and family flocked to the tiny diner, where doughnuts and coffee were on the house.
“This was like his lifelong dream,” his stepsister, Cher Newell, 37, said of the restaurant.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
RTD trying to address safety issues
RTD outlined a number of steps it has taken this week to address safety issues, including:
Safety-reinforcement training for all bus operators.
• Analysis of past accidents to determine whether there are any trends that can be incorporated into safety training.
• Additional safety messaging in RTD buildings and on buses.
• Increased on-street service monitoring to detect and correct any unsafe driving.
Tom McGhee, The Denver Post
