Emotions Get Real During Drunken Driving Awareness Exercise

Everyone thought they knew what to expect.

Los Alamitos High School had done the national anti-drunken driving campaign Every 15 Minutes just two years ago. There would be a car crash scene on campus this week. There would be mock arrests, a mock sentencing, fake blood and even fake deaths.

But somehow the emotions were all too real.

“I wasn’t expecting to feel this way,” said 11th-grader Lindsey Lawmaster. Lindsey played a crash victim, who survived when a drunk driver crashed into the car she was riding in. Her two friends in the car didn’t make it. Throughout the performance, Lindsey sat bloodied and motionless while Orange County fire fighters used the Jaws of Life to pry open the car and pull out the bodies of her friends.

“I started to breathe faster, and I started hyperventilating. I kept telling myself, ‘It’s not real. You’re fine,’” said Lawmaster. “But it was real. It felt real.’”

Lawmaster wasn’t the only one who was moved.

As hundreds of high school students gathered around the crash scene, they laughed and jockeyed for elbow room. But then police and ambulance sirens cut through the air.

Two boys were pulled from the first car. Underneath the blood, their faces were familiar to their classmates. The driver, Matt Terrell, was administered a field sobriety test. As he stumbled through the test, Apphia Castillo was pulled from the wreckage of the second car. Her friends watched as firefighters carried her to the grass and placed a plastic tarp over her. Rescue workers pried apart the wreckage of the second car to get to the two remaining victims. Hannah Morrow was placed on a gurney and rushed off in the back of an ambulance.

The two boys were handcuffed and placed in the back of squad cars. A hearse arrived, and Althea was lifted into a body bag and placed in the back.

Twelfth-grader Jiyeon Joo watched as tears welled up in her eyes.

“I am thinking about both the victims and the driver,” she said. “This is what a real accident scene looks like, and realizing that I might know some of the people is sad.”

Orange County Fire Authority Engineer John Suwanpruiksa helped with the scene.

“This is what it is really like. I see this a lot,” he said. “It’s a job, and I have to separate my emotions from what I do. I just hope this helps them realize that there are big consequence to drinking and driving.”

While most of the students went back to class after the car crash scene, it was the beginning of an emotionally harrowing day for the crash participants and roughly 30 students, who were pulled from class to represent drunken driving deaths.

Hannah Morrow was rushed by ambulance to the Los Alamitos Medical Center. A police officer called her parents and told them that she had been in an accident.

They had been forewarned, but the performance was still difficult.

“They opened the back door of the ambulance. I saw her feet sticking out from the covers, and then I saw the blood,” said Mike Morrow, Hannah’s father. “I just kept trying to put in the back of my head, ‘This is not real. This is not real.’”

The doctor informed him that his daughter had died. His wife cried over her child’s corpse. Then they headed to the courthouse to see the driver sentenced.

“That’s when the emotions started kicking in,” said Mike Morrow. “All the kids involved came in, and you could tell a lot of them had been crying and a lot were still weeping.”

Several of the parents cried too. Like the other victims’ parents, Mike Morrow got to address Matt, the boy being sentenced for killing his daughter.

“While I was talking to Matt, he started crying, and the fact that he was feeling guilty even though it wasn’t real, that’s when the full impact hit me, and I was emotional too,” said Mike Morrow.

After the mock trial, the students were taken to a hotel overnight to simulate the separation from friends and family caused by the deaths and prison sentences linked to drunken driving. Their facebook pages informed friends and family of their passing, and they spent the evening writing letters to their parents, telling them all the things they wished they had said before dying, said Laura Herzog, a chaperone and event organizer.

“It was very emotional, I think a lot more emotional then they expected to be,” added Herzog. “The bottom line is if one child out of all of them doesn’t drink and drive or doesn’t let a friend drink and drive, then it will be worth it.”

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 10,839 drunken driving deaths in 2009 (the most recent reporting period). Every 15 Minutes is supported by a grant provided by the California Highway Patrol and the California Office of Traffic Safety. Additional partners include Los Alamitos Medical Center, Orange County Fire Authority, Mr. C’s Towing, Forest Lawn, Seal Beach Host Lions Club, and Leos’ Club.

Some kids at the school do drink and drive, said Lindsey, the crash victim in this week’s exercise.

“I think a lot of the kids don’t want to call their parents and say, ‘Come pick me up.’ So they say, ‘I’ll drink water and try to sober up, and then drive home,’ ” said Lindsey. “I really think (Every 15 Minutes) is going to change a lot of mindsets of kids at school. I think people will take away the keys when someone drinks.”

As a parent, Mike Morrow said he knows its naïve to think that his twin 17-year-olds or their sister in college would never drink or find themselves in situations where friends are drinking.

“We told them to call us if it ever happens, and we’ll come get them,” he said. “When the time comes, it’s going to be difficult, but we’ll try to appreciate that they did the right thing and not lecture them on drinking.”

However, this experience will help, he said.

“As soon as the program released them, Hannah came running over and locked me into a hug like she hasn’t locked me into in a long time,” he added. “It’s definitely something that I will always remember. I made a copy of the letters the kids wrote and put it away with stuff to look back on in later years. This was definitely a life-changer.”