MOLINE, Illinois – Friends and coworkers are remembering a Taxslayer Center employee who was killed while trying to cross the street on his way to work early Wednesday morning.
Coworkers say 65-year-old Richard Stout was trying to walk across the street from the bus station to the Taxslayer doors. They say he was focusing on the ground since it was icy out instead of the cars coming at him. One car stopped for him, but the car in the next lane didn’t see him.
“He was trying to get across the street with a bad leg and moving really slow and watching his steps instead of watching the cars,” says Taxslayer Center Executive Director, Scott Mullen.
Stout had been a maintenance worker at the Taxslayer for 25 years, and employees say he hardly missed a day.
“Every time you walked past Rich you couldn’t get by without having a conversation,” says Mullen.
But he wasn’t only known at the Taxslayer, he was a face lots of people in the Quad Cities saw when he umpired little league games.
“Everyone pretty much in Moline, if you’re at a sporting event you’d know him,” says grounds crew worker, Joe Atkinson.
“He umpired two of my daughter’s softball games on a regular basis,” Mullen remembers.
Police say no arrests have been made in the accident.