Mock crash at WV illustrates real danger

Heather Fitzgerald sat at a high school assembly and heard a speaker talk about the consequences of drinking and driving. She dismissed the advice, thinking it wouldn’t happen to her.

That was 12 years ago.

On Friday, with prom and graduation on the horizon, the 29-year-old sat in a wheelchair and asked West Valley High School students gathered in their gym to listen to the message she ignored when she was 17.

A couple of weeks before her high school graduation, Fitzgerald and three friends went camping, got drunk and decided to go for a ride early one Sunday morning in May 1995.

When they hit a corner going 95 mph, she was thrown from the pickup. Fitzgerald said she always wore her seat belt – except when she was drinking. She broke her neck in four places, and the damage to her spinal cord left her paralyzed. The driver spent a year in jail.

“I was like you. I ran track, got good grades. I was a good kid during the week. But by the time I was a senior I wasn’t listening to my parents,” Fitzgerald said. “I didn’t just pay for it – my parents paid for this really poor choice I made.”

After hearing Fitzgerald’s message, the students went outside, and although they knew that the two cars crashed outside the school’s gym on Friday were in a mock collision, what they saw seemed all too real.

The body of a boy hung lifelessly out of the front passenger’s window of a green Volvo. A girl wearing a bloodied yellow prom dress had apparently gone through the windshield of the other car.

The crowd of students became quiet as emergency responders arrived at the scene with sirens blaring. Within minutes, Spokane Valley Fire Department, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Department and a MedStar helicopter arrived to investigate the crash and treat the nine teens involved in the simulated accident. Two boys were pronounced dead at the scene, and one girl wouldn’t survive her injuries.

“This is a lot more graphic than I thought it would be. It’s definitely a good reminder, especially for kids who are going to the prom soon,” said Bryer Reynolds, 16.

Allyn Schoen, 17, thinks the school should do this every year. “Just seeing them lying here dead and after listening to the speaker … knowing it happened to a real person who’s here talking to us makes an impression,” Schoen said.

After the mock crash, a mock memorial service with caskets, flowers and eulogies was held in the gym. Some students cried real tears as slide shows recounting the too-short lives of their three “deceased” classmates were shown.

Counselors were available afterward if students needed to talk.

Members of the West Valley’s Washington Drug-free Youth organization spent months planning Friday’s event.

Senior Brad Roth, a student leader of the youth organization, said they had a lot of support from the high school, school board, law enforcement and the community.

They also received assistance and a $4,500 grant from State Farm Insurance.

“If kids aren’t listening to their parents, this (event) will really make an impact on them,” said Roth. “If they are listening to their parents, this will reinforce what their parents are saying.”