Remembering the Wichita father, grandfather killed when truck struck tricycle

Daniel Scott Forshey always liked working on and riding bicycles, ever since he was a boy when he and his best friend would ride around their Hilltop neighborhood.

The 57-year-old Wichita man died Sept. 17 while riding a tricycle. He was hit by a truck around 9 p.m. while both were headed east on Murdock at Broadway, according to police and family. The truck left the scene; a 21-year-old Wichita man was arrested the next day about nine miles away. He has been charged with failure to stop at an accident that a driver should have reasonably known resulted in death.

Friends and family remembered Forshey for his humor and selflessness.

“He was the kind of guy who would go without so that someone else could have something,” said Guy Pocowatchit, Forshey’s best friend since childhood who is listed in his obituary as his “brother by choice.” Pocowatchit recalled Forshey driving the moving van when he and his wife went to Albuquerque years ago and then spending months with him earlier this year to help him clear acres of land on their property in Oklahoma.

“He has helped us so many times,” Pocowatchit said.

One of Forshey’s daughters, Abrina Forshey, said she found comfort knowing her father had recently returned to church and had been at an altar praying and crying just 30 minutes before he was killed.

“I find comfort in that he was trying to get his relationship back right with God,” she said.

He is survived by his two daughters, four grandchildren, his ex-wife and five siblings.

A visitation and celebration of life will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday and and 2 p.m. Saturday respectively at Cozine Memorial Group’s location at 1147 South Broadway. A graveside service will be held Tuesday at Calvary Cemetery in Parsons. More information can be found at cozine.com/obituaries/daniel-forshey.

Growing up in Hilltop

Pocowatchit and Forshey met when they were in the third grade. They both attended Jefferson Elementary School but met while playing and riding bikes around where they lived in the Hilltop neighborhood.

They also often hung out after school at the Hilltop Community Center, which was “the headquarter for all the kids in the neighborhood,” said Rod Pocowatchit, an Eagle correspondent, older brother to Guy Pocowatchit and a friend to Forshey.

At the community center, which closed in the 1990s, the Pocowatchits and Forshey and others would play all kinds of games.

Forshey was also handy with bicycles. He would fix his, the Pocowatchits’ and others in the neighborhood. He also added different after-market items to “spice up” their bikes, Guy Pocowatchit said.

Those bikes were their way of getting around and making money, especially during summer when there was more time to fill. The two used to ride to the creek east of Oliver and then use bologna to catch crawdads, which they sold by the bucket for $5 to $10 to a bait shop that used to be on Harry between Hillside and Clifton.

They would use the money to get “crispies” at Long John Silver’s and candy at the grocery store.

Once, they followed the creek onto the then-L.W. Clapp Golf Course and decided to collect golf balls, instead of crawdads, from the creek.

The bucket filled quickly.

They planned to go to the field behind the community center and see how far they could hit the golf balls with a bat. While leaving the course, they were followed by some golfers in a cart. The boys ran for their bikes, but the driver quickly caught them.

“And they said, ‘Hey, you guys aren’t in trouble or anything. We saw you guys had a bucket of balls. You got any good ones in there?,’” Guy Pocowatchit said.

They sold some to those golfers and then to others who came up right after them. The end haul was around $50.

“From that point on, we weren’t crawdadding no more, we were gonna go get golf balls,” he said. “So we would go every other Saturday.”

The two also made some long-distance trips on their bikes, including once to downtown. They both got in trouble after telling their parents.

Forshey was known to have bike frames and hundreds of bicycle parts wherever he lived, family said.

Pocowatchit thinks Forshey may have built the tricycle he was riding when he was hit, since that was something he always did.

Growing up

The two remained close friends after they grew up, doing a road trip earlier in the year to Florida to see one of Forshey’s siblings and driving around Oklahoma to visit Pocowatchit’s family.

Forshey had his own adventures too.

Cynthia Palmer, who was married to Forshey for about 30 years, said she first saw her future husband in the 1980s when she and her girlfriend hollered to Pocowatchit and a friend as they drove by them on McLean.

The four of them hung out that night.

“And the rest was history,” she said, adding from his humor, good looks and the conversation she knew she didn’t want their time together to end that night.

They had two girls together, Amanda Forshey-Brault and Abrina Forshey.

He enjoyed cooking for his family. His favorites to cook were country-fried steak and Mexican food.

Forshey had worked as a cook at different restaurants over the years, including the shuttered Olive Tree Bistro and Dirty D’s Bar & Grill, family said.

“Daniel was a devoted father and a hardworking man,” Abrina Forshey wrote on the GoFundMe family started to help cover funeral expenses. “He was known for his perseverance and his deep love for those closest to him.”

The fundraiser can be found at shorturl.at/3xsT1.

Last 24 hours of his life

Forshey had recently struggled with homelessness after a couple of jobs didn’t pan out, family said.

He ended up in a Wichita shelter, which helped him reconnect with a church.

Bethany Revival Center, on 21st Street, uses a bus pickup and drop-off at a few shelters and other areas to help people make it to church.

Forshey had started going to the Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening services the last few weeks, pastor John DiZazzo said.

Forshey went to altar to pray a few times at the end of the service, DiZazzo said. Altar calls are invitations for people to accept Jesus Christ for the first time, recommit their lives to Jesus Christ or also for anyone to come and pray.

Forshey had told multiple people at the church that he wanted to get right with Christ, DiZazzo said.

At the end of the service on Wednesday, which runs roughly from 7-8:30 p.m., Forshey again came and knelt at the altar. This time tears ran down his face.

Another person in the church came alongside Forshey to pray for him as well.

DiZazzo said Forshey and “God alone know” what he prayed that night.

“We have every reason to believe that, based on the evidence and what he was telling other people … that he was there talking to God about his heart … and Christ taking over.”