Counselors Aid Students After 5 Schoolmates Die in Crash

SALINAS —  Grief counselors at Salinas High School on Thursday aided students distraught by the deaths of five schoolmates in a two-car collision.

“We have things well in control and have been able to manage,” said Roger Anton, associate superintendent of the Salinas Union High School District.

The five killed Wednesday morning were apparently cutting classes at the 1,500-student high school when their car hit another vehicle carrying six members of one family. All of those in the other car were injured.

“It was pretty ugly,” said Chris Cain, a waitress at the Toro Palace Cafe, a few hundred yards down the road from the crash site.

Patrolmen estimated both vehicles were going about 55 m.p.h.

Only one passenger in the car driven by Lisa O’Donnell, 16, was wearing a seat belt. In contrast, one person in the other vehicle, a van, was not strapped in.

The other teen-agers who died in the crash were identified as Justin Baker, David Clark, Jay Bounds and Josh Morgan. Morgan was 16 and the others 15.

A car driven by O’Donnell apparently skidded on a curve, veered into the opposite lane and was struck broadside by an oncoming vehicle. A woman, her parents and her three children survived and were taken to Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.