The late Mickey Shunick is getting a bicycle route named in her honor, assuming the City-Parish Council approves a resolution on Tuesday declaring existing biking lanes in the heart of Lafayette The Mickey Shunick Memorial Bike Loop.
Shunick vanished in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 19, 2012 after leaving a friend’s house to cycle home following an evening of music at Artmosphere. She was reported missing later that day and in the days and weeks that followed Lafayette coalesced around an effort spearheaded by friends and family to find her.
It wasn’t until two months later, on Aug. 9, that now-convicted murderer Brandon Lavergne led investigators to a shallow grave in rural Evangeline Parish where they discovered Shunick’s body. Lavergne would later admit as part of plea deal to avoid the death penalty that he had rammed Shunick’s bicycle near Blackham Coliseum and abducted her, but that the scrappy anthropology student came to in his truck and stabbed him before he murdered her.
Her disappearance and search made international headlines.
The Mickey Shunick Memorial Bike Loop will tie together existing bike lanes and routes around central Lafayette surrounding UL, the Horse Farm and Girard Park. Following the route even brings riders to the area where Lavergne admitted to abducting Shunick — a location near Blackham Coliseum where a bicycle memorial to Shunick was erected in the weeks following discovery of her remains.
According to a map included with the resolution:
