I’m incredibly sad to announce the passing of Troy Adrian Talbot. He was only 26 years old.

Troy was struck by a car on December 22nd, 2014, and has been in what we thought was a “stable” coma since then. There were no broken bones, just swelling from a head injury, but he was unresponsive and couldn’t breathe without aid of a ventilator. The swelling in his brain was beginning to subside and doctors were hopeful, but his lungs simply would not return to functioning on their own. His exact time of death is unknown, but we lost him in the past 24 hours.

Troy was young, hopeful, bright, creative, and a shining example of the sort of people that I hope are rising up to take the place of my generation in the yoyo industry. His fledgling company, Sorry YoYos, was beginning to gain some traction with a collaboration with Paul Escolar, and pre-orders for their yoyo, the Ratchet, hit their goal pretty quickly. At last word, Troy’s roommate Sebastian Brock and Sorry YoYos team captain Tucker Holland are working on getting production finished so that all pre-orders could be honored. We’ll update more on that as information comes in.

This was a tragic accident. It was such a stupid and pointless way for us to lose one of our own. There’s no sense to be made of it, it’s just something horrible that happened and it’s normal for friends and fans to feel a sense of helplessness about something so sudden. Please, please reach out to your family, friends, counselors, etc. and find someone to talk to about this. Grief is a strange and difficult thing to deal with, but we can’t let it drag us down. Troy would have wanted us to face the future just as he did…with a smile and a heart full of hope.

Goodbye, Troy.