Drunken driving claimed the lives of two Davis High School students on Tuesday in a horrific head-on collision that landed a third student behind bars.
At least, that’s what planners of the Every 15 Minutes program wanted students to believe.
Held at high schools nationwide — and every three years at Davis High — Every 15 Minutes seeks to illustrate the dangers of impaired driving with activities such as a simulated crash and student assembly featuring speakers whose lives were forever altered by a drunken motorist.
This week’s program was seven months in the making, involving a team of DHS students, the Davis Police Department and other local first responders such as firefighter and ambulance crews.
“I’m hoping that, given the time of year — graduation, prom, going into college — kids take a moment to think about the consequences of underage alcohol use and abuse,” Principal Will Brown said. “There’s so much promise in this community, and they can lose it all with one decision.”
In Tuesday’s scenario, Connor Amesbury made the fatal choice of getting behind the wheel with two bottles of vodka along for the ride. His car slammed head-on into another vehicle on Oak Avenue, gravely injuring the other driver, Anna Belenis, and killing her passenger Abbey Fisk.
Belenis later would die at the hospital.
The wails of responding police, fire engine and ambulance sirens lured students to the Oak Avenue sidewalk, where they watched as firefighters cut the roof off the victims’ car and pull their bloodied bodies — the work of longtime drama teacher Gwyneth Bruch — to waiting stretchers. Fisk’s body soon was covered with a yellow sheet.
Sammie Griffiths, a junior at DHS, and her friend Riana Young, a sophomore, stood with their arms around each other as they observed the drama, including Amesbury’s failure of a field sobriety test before being placed “under arrest.”
“I wish he had made the right choices. Nobody deserves to have this,” said a clearly distraught Young. It would take another few moments for the teens to come to the realization that the crash was not real.
“Wow. I am still in shock,” Griffiths said. “This actually happens. That’s why it’s so realistic.”
Others were not as easily convinced, having heard of prior years’ programs from older siblings or friends.
Solomon Biers-Ariel, a senior, said seeing Amesbury at the crash scene clued him in.
“I knew he wouldn’t do anything stupid like that. He’s a responsible individual,” he said. Still, “it was very believable. I appreciate the effects — very, very well done.”
The lessons continued throughout the day, with one student being pulled from class every 15 minutes — the rate at which someone dies in an alcohol-related collision in the United States — to demonstrate DUI’s human loss. Officers read the students’ “obituaries” written by their parents.
Those students — known as “the living dead” — attended a retreat Tuesday evening “so their friends will have to think about, what if I didn’t have my friend to talk to?” said John Wilson, a retired Davis police sergeant who has coordinated the program locally since 1997.
A student assembly planned for Wednesday featured a keynote speaker from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, along with a student-made video that showed the events leading up to and following Tuesday’s mock crash.
Although he retired in 2012, Wilson says it’s important for him to keep the Every 15 Minutes program going.
“We used to lose so many kids to DUI crashes every year,” he said. Since launching the program nearly two decades ago, “it’s been so much better. It’s effective. It really works.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene
