by KIM HILSENBECK
About 2,000 Lehman High School students watched a drunken driving accident dramatization unfold in front of them in an eerie silence. The sounds of sirens from local law enforcement and emergency responder vehicles pierced the drizzly, gray March morning.
In the middle of it all, the Grim Reaper waited for his next victims.
“This is shocking,” said Sierra Sambrano, 17, who had a front row view of the events. “We know most of these kids,” she said quietly. “It really makes you think.”
The kids, Tiffany Rodriguez, 15, Kody Banda, 18, Rebecca Garza, 17, Harleigh Elliott, 18, Jeremiah Flynn, 18, and Anissa Robles, 18, are all Lehman students who portrayed the drivers and passengers of the crash, which was staged in the middle of the Lehman High parking lot as part of the Shattered Dreams program.
Two crash victims were taken away from the mock scene in ambulances; the rest of the scenario played out at Seton Medical Center Hays. The families of both were brought in and watched their son or daughter “die.”
Sgt. Phillip Taylor, the sheriff’s community outreach officer, said Elliott, who played the role of the drunken driver, would go through the same procedures any driver who causes the death of others would. Following a sobriety test and arrest, complete with handcuffs, Elliott —who seemed to be crying real tears—was hauled off in a sheriff’s vehicle and booked into custody.
“She’ll be taken to jail, booked, photographed, and put in a holding cell,” Taylor said. “She’ll get to call her parents from jail and tell them she’s been charged with intoxication manslaughter.”
The mock crash was just one part of the Shattered Dreams program, according to Tim Savoy, Hays CISD spokesman.
Each of the crash victims wrote a winning essay to be part of the event, according to Karin Prado, a teacher at Lehman and a student council adviser. Her co-adviser Erin Powell helped the student council coordinate the internal Lehman High activities.
“We had 27 essay winners overall who were involved either in the crash or throughout the day,” Prado said.
Other students with winning essays were pulled from class by the Grim Reaper, played by volunteer Kyle firefighter Mike Fulton. The Reaper went room to room every 15 minutes selecting more victims – silently placing a hand on their shoulder – representing how often someone dies in drunken driving-related crashes.
A Hays County sheriff’s officer read obituaries to the classes of those pulled by the Grim Reaper. Photos and obituaries were later posted in the main hallway, decked out as a graveyard, where others could write a note to the deceased victims. Those victims, who returned to class in makeup and black T-shirts, spent the rest of the day in silence.
Alexis Cervantes, 17, walked out of room C102 slowly behind the Grim Reaper. Her eyes welled with tears, her head down. She listened from the hall as a sheriff’s officer read her obituary.
Cervantes was still emotional as Lehman’s theater club members did her death makeup. She said it was an emotional day. She wrote the essay to participate in Shattered Dreams because her aunt was killed by a drunken driver several years ago. She was 26.
“Her death really had a big effect on me,” Cervantes said.
Parents of the mock deceased victims were notified by the Sheriff’s Office about their son or daughter’s “death.” Taylor said everything was prearranged so as not to completely freak parents out.
The full-scale mock drunken driving crash was part of the Shattered Dreams program created by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in the late 1990s. In 2001, the program came to Hays CISD under the direction of Hays County Justice of the Peace Beth Smith, along with her daughters Crystal Dixon and Tiffany Kurnutt.
“We know kids drink,” said Dixon. “We hope that by experiencing this Shattered Dreams program, they make better choices about drinking and driving.”
2012 marks the fifth presentation to students in the district. The program alternates between Lehman and Hays high schools every few years.
The dramatization, which took months of coordination, involved the Hays County Sheriff’s Office, police and fire departments from Kyle and Buda, Hays County Pct. 2 Justice of the Peace and County Constable, the Department of Public Safety, Seton Medical Center Hays, Harrell Funeral Home, and professional makeup artist Jon Claeton. Inclement weather prevented the emergency airlift helicopter from arriving.
That evening, participating students took part in an off-sight retreat to discuss their experience. They wrote letters to their parents, in some cases apologizing for causing an accident or getting in the car with a drunken driver.
An assembly the next day gave Lehman students a chance to discuss their feelings and experiences about Shattered Dreams.
Several parents of the students portraying victims during the event shared their experience of having a Hays County sheriff’s deputy show up at their home to let them know their child was killed in a drunken driving accident.
The final speaker was Lydia Serna, mother of Rebecca Garza, whose ex-husband is serving a seven to ten-year prison term for multiple DUI offenses. Serna said he missed out on his kids’ childhoods because he chose drinking.
Prado said the message about never drinking and driving really hit home with Lehman students, especially after the assembly.
“Everyone was very emotional today,” she said. “Some of the kids lost it.”