It Isn't Real, But It's Scary Anyway -- Issaquah Students See Graphic Results Of Drunken Driving

ISSAQUAH

The dead student lay on the ground, covered by a white sheet. A dozen firefighters, medics and police officers swarmed around a smashed station wagon, pulling injured teenagers from the car and loading them into waiting ambulances. Two sobbing girls huddled behind the wheel of a police cruiser.

"Dead, dead!" one of them wailed as a chaplain tried to comfort her.

Twenty feet away, more than a 1,000 students formed a ring around the accident and watched. At first they laughed and made wisecracks. Then they grew more serious as the grim scene unfolded.

Yesterday's car crash at Issaquah High School was only an act - a re-enactment by the Issaquah Fire and Police departments, King County Fire District 10, Bellevue Medic 14 and Harborview Medical Center's Airlift Northwest helicopter to dramatize the perils of drinking and driving.

But to many Issaquah students who watched, the scene evoked memories of a real car crash more than a year ago that took the lives of two Issaquah students and seriously injured another.

The January 1996 accident killed David Harris, 16, and Joseph Weber, 17, and seriously injured Lucas Doherty, who is a senior at the school this year. Excessive speed, not drug or alcohol use, was to blame. At the time of the crash, the car was traveling so fast it flew off the road and wrapped around a utility pole, the front bumper touching the rear.

"A lot of people are still thinking about it," said Kim Newman, a junior who knew one of the students killed. Newman said many of her friends have not heeded the lessons of that accident: "There are days when it just scares me - when I hear a siren, I wonder if it's someone I know."

Those concerns were echoed by other students. Like teens everywhere, some Issaquah teens, even those who were close to Weber and Harris, still drive too fast, drive recklessly or drink and drive.

"A lot of people are hypocritical," said Keridwyn Deller, who played one of the sobbing students in the re-enactment. "I still see people going way too fast. They're young - they think they're invincible."

"I'll freely admit it: I've been in a car with a drunk driver," said Shohrah Ghorishi, a sophomore. "I knew it wasn't OK through the whole thing."

Ghorishi struggled to explain, then laughed nervously.

Junior Jennifer Chancellor watched the re-enactment with a look of grief on her face. She attended the service for Weber and Harris last year, although she didn't know them.

"I have a half brother I never got to know because he was killed by a drunk driver," she said. "All through today in class, everybody's going to be talking about this."

After the performance, an insurance agent talked to an assembly of students about how expensive car insurance becomes after a drunken-driving conviction. A prosecutor talked about penalties for driving while intoxicated. And a father talked about the pain of losing a daughter to a drunken driver.

"The worst thing I've ever had to do in my life is go to Harborview hospital and see that man pull a sheet over my daughter," said Bothell resident George Jannusch, choking back tears. Jannusch's daughter, Keri, was 17 when she was killed by a drunken driver.

"Life is precious; life is sweet," Jannusch said. "Ten years have passed. I cannot bring my daughter back. I cannot bring my daughter back."