volume 34 number 7

8/6/2019 Volume 34 Number 7

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/volume-34-number-7 1/4

May 2005

Vol. 34

Special Shattered Dreams EditionSpecial Shattered Dreams EditionSpecial Shattered Dreams EditionSpecial Shattered Dreams EditionSpecial Shattered Dreams Edition Hilary Francis

Co-editor

Thump thump....thump

thump...thump...a heart beat.

Beeeeeeep...a flat line.

Another student is pulled out

of class by the Grim Reaper.

The somber students return

to class with their faces

painted white acting as though

they are no longer living--they

may not talk or smile-- they

are The Living Dead.

This was repeated 16 moretimes throughout the day sym-

bolizing the fact that a person

is killed or injured as a result

of a drunk driving accident ev-

ery 20 minutes in Texas.

Obituaries were placed in

the Blue Commons as each

BHS student was “killed.”

Crosses were hammered

into the ground in front and

around the school--another

symbol of their passing on.

As each student was re-

moved from class and “killed”their parents were notified of

their death.

“Playing dead in all my

classes wasn’t hard, but real-

izing that my family was be-

ing notified of my ‘death’ put

things into perspective for

me,” said junior Amanda

Smith.

At two o’clock a 911 call

was broadcast across the in-tercom. A frantic female ex-

plained the situation of a two

car accident.

“Even after all of the mock

events of the day, the 911 call

was extremely realistic and

somewhat eerie,” said fresh-

man Travis Whitley.

Students filed out to the

“crime scene” on Campus

Drive between Silver and Vi-

king Stadium where two cars

were staged as if they had just

collided.

Bryan police and fire de-

partment personnel quickly re-

sponded to the mock crime

scene.

The drunk driver, Travis

Komar, and his passengers,

Matt Payne and John Diaz,

were relatively unharmed, suf-

fering only minor scrapes and

bruises.

Komar and Payne were ar-

rested for DWIs and were

taken to the police station

while Diaz was issued a cita-

tion.

“I still felt guilty even thoughI knew it wasn’t real and I

only received a citation. It

made me realize that I

shouldn’t even be in a car

with someone who had been

drinking whether or not they

are the driver or just another

passenger like me,” said se-

nior John Diaz.

The other people involved,

however, were not as lucky.

Passengers of the hit vehicle

included Audra Smith, Tara

Maliska, and Darlene

Crawford with driver Hannah

Sledge.

While Bryan PD placed the

offenders in the patrol car,

paramedics and firefighters

worked to remove the four

girls from the vehicle.

Using the Jaws of Life, a

machine that cut through the

car doors and roof, they re-

moved passengers Smith and

Crawford. Both were rushed

away in an ambulance.Maliska, the passenger be-

hind the drivers’ seat, was

lifeflighted to St. Joseph’s in

critical condition but “died”

while in the care of the hospi-

tal staff.

Sledge, the driver, was pro-

nounced dead at the scene

and taken to Calloway Jones

Funeral Home in a white

hearse.

“Watching Hannah, my

close friend, being covered

with a sheet and put in a

hearse was almost too realis-

tic,” said junior Tiffany Drozd.

“It made me think about what

life would be like without my

friends and how tragic these

accidents are.”

Parents of these students

were notified after the wreck.

“I wasn’t prepared for the

officers or their message.

When they finally arrived, I

thought I could handle the

news. I had already been told, but was immediately emo-

tional,” said Ms. Sledge.

The parents all felt some

emotion as the idea of their

child being gone forever be-

cause of a bad decision went

through their minds.

--continued on pg 3Senior Bailey Idom hammers her cross in to symoblize

her death during the Shattered Dreams program.



3 M a y 5 , 2

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Special Edition • The Norseman

Volume 34, Special Edition

The Norseman is a publication produced by the Advanced Journalism

Newspaper Production class at Bryan High School. The opinions expressed

are those of the author and may not represent the opinion of the faculty,

staff or administrators of Bryan High School.

Signed letters to the editor are welcome and may be delivered to Rm.

6160 or the Blue Campus Office.

Member-UIL Interscholastic League Press Conference (ILPC)

Winner of the ILPC Award of Distinguished Merit

1998-99, 1999-2000 Silver Star, 2001-2002.

Co-Editors

Hilary Francis & Jennifer Haynie

Staff writers

Blair Whitely

Adviser

Rebecca Dominy

continued from pg 1

“I can’t imagine the feelings parents must actually feel

when receiving that kind of

heartbreaking news,” Sledge

said

The 31 students involved in

the Shattered Dreams pro-

gram spent the night at Mes-

siah Ranch where they talked

about their emotions from the

day and participated in lead-

ership activities.“All students opened up and

exposed themselves without

being afraid during the re-

treat,” said Marc McFeron, a

fire inspector and public edu-

cator who worked with the

teenagers.

Each student and parent

separately wrote a letter shar-

ing their heartfelt desires tosee one another again.

Mrs. Allmon, Drew

Allmon’s mother, said that she

was impacted far more than

she believed she would be.

Although she knew it was a

mock situation, she wept

when told her son had been

“killed.”

An assembly was held in

the Viking Gym the followingmorning where speakers de-

scribed their own tales of

loved ones killed or injured by

a drunk driver.

A slide show produced by

the BHS Media Department

captured the previous day’s

events.

Jennifer Haynie

Co-editor

Mrs. McGill is the mother of an 18

year old A&M Consolidated High

School 2002 graduate, and on the nightof September 22, 2002, Matthew

McGill was tragically killed because

someone made the decision to drink

and drive.

On the morning of April 28, 2005 all

Bryan High junior and senior students

gathered along with BHS faculty for

“Seeing the clips of high

school students having funand then suddenly changing to

the crash scene made me think

about how precious life is.

There’s no reason for it to end

so quickly due to a stupid

‘night of fun’,” said junior Blair

Whitley.

All who attended, partici-

pated, or merely observed

were truly touched by the

Shattered Dreams program.“We believe that if just one

student was effected by the

Shattered Dreams program,

then our efforts were worth

it,” said advisor Mrs. Willett.

“We just hope all students took

the program seriously and will

learn from it.”

the Shattered Dreams conclusion at

an assembly held in the Viking Gym.

Mrs. McGill, along with other guest

speakers, shared with Bryan High her

experience in losing a loved one to analcohol related accident.

Matt and his fiancee were on their

way home from a grocery store when

they were hit head-on by a drunk

driver.

After a frantic phone call from

Matt’s fiancee, Mrs. McGill, only min-

utes before the ambulances, rushed to

the scene which was only one and a

half miles from their home.

“Matt was in the drivers seat splat-

tered with dust, dirt, and broken glasslooking as if he was asleep,” said Mrs.

McGill

Matt was taken to College Station

Medical Center to receive care for his

injuries, which included a ruptured

spleen, a broken left arm, and severe

brain trauma.

Mrs. McGill and her family anx-

iously waited in a private waiting area

for nearly two days until the neurolo-gist who had done brain surgery on

Matt came to deliver the news that

Matt’s pituitary gland was shutting

down.

This meant that all of the organs in

Matt’s body would slowly start to shut

down one by one.

The family was advised to say their

final good-byes and Mrs. McGill had

to walk away leaving her only son

behind.Shortly after, the hospital began the

process of organ retrieval because the

family wanted to donate Matt’s organs.

The family is still struggling every-

day with the thought that they will

never get to see Matt.

“I would have given anything, any-

thing in the world, to have awakened

to discover that this had all been a bad

dream,” said Mrs. McGill.The family is now members of a

organization, MADD (Mothers

Against Drunk Driving ), that no fam-

ily ever wants to be a part of.

Mrs. McGill will never get the op-

portunity, every mother believes they

will have, to see their child grow and

mature to be an adult.

The decision one man made to drink

and drive did not just affect him butaffected someone else and their whole

family.

The man who hit Matt has never

spent a day in jail and is now hiding

from police, avoiding the punishment

he knows he would serve.

Matt’s family chose to dedicate time

to the Shattered Dreams program to

spread their story and let others know

this could happen to anyone at any-

time.Mrs. McGill has visited five differ-

ent schools since her son’s death to

encourage others not to make the mis-

take of drinking and driving.

The Reality of Drinking and Driving, the Effects on a Family

Shattered Dreams...



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The Norseman • Special Edition

Intoxication Rates Among Teens Killed in Car Crashes

Drinking and Driving: A Fatal CombinationThe National Highway Traffic

Safety Administration (NHTSA) pro-

duced a list of statistics on drunk driv-ing for the year 2000.

Alcohol involvement remains the

leading factor in motor vehicle deaths

in the United States.

•Alcohol was involved in 40% of

fatal crashes.

•An average of one alcohol related

fatality occurs every 32 minutes.

•An average of one person is injuredapproximately every 2 minutes in a

crash where alcohol is present.

•About 3 in every 10 Americans

will be involved in an alcohol related

crash at some time in their lives.

•Traffic crashes are this country’s

greatest single cause of death for ev-

ery age from 6 to 33 and almost half

of these fatalities are related to drunk

driving.

•White males, ages 21-34 consti-tute the largest percentage of drunk

(or impaired) drivers in all fatal crashes.

•Young people between the ages of

12 and 20 accounted for 11.4% of all

U.S. alcohol consumption.

•More than 2,300 anti-drunk driv-

ing laws have been passed since 1980.

•25% of Texas seniors admitted to

have driven with a bit too much to drink

at least once during the past schoolyear.

•Children who have begin drinking

alcohol before the age of 15 are four

times more likely to develope alcohol-

ism in adulthood than children who do

not drink until the legal age of 21.

•Approximately 43 of our fellow citi-

zens are lost each day, 305 each week,

and 1309 each month because of al-

cohol-related accidents. That’s one life

lost every 33 minutes.•It’s estimated that every 15 min-

utes a young person dies in this coun-

try as a result of a drunk driving crash.

**Statistics and information taken

from www.alcoholalert.com,

www.safeparents.com and

www.tcada.state.tx.us**

volume 34 number 7

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