A crash with added meaning

Marisa O’Neil

The boy entered the courtroom wearing an orange jumpsuit, handcuffs

and a somber expression. His shock of sun-bleached, long hair served

as a reminder of carefree summer days by the beach with his fellow

classmates from high school.

He sat silently as the clerk read the jury’s verdict: guilty of

vehicular manslaughter while under the influence of alcohol. Three

counts, one for each of the young lives he’d taken.

Brandon Mason, 16, played the role of a drunken driver on Tuesday

for Corona del Mar High School’s Every 15 Minutes program, which

recreated a grisly crash scene, trial and memorial for three students

killed in the crash.

This year, the scene had added significance because two graduates

from the school, 22-year-old William Benjamin Dunham and Carson

Chirico, were killed in a strikingly similar crash last week. A third

man, Tyler Christie, was critically injured.

“I knew [Christie], that’s one reason this is so ironic and sad,”

18-year-old Alli Manning said outside the courtroom. “That incident

goes to prove that things like [Every 15 Minutes] are so beneficial.”

The timing of the event also wasn’t lost on 17-year-old Elyse

Avila.

“Maybe if he had seen this he wouldn’t have done that,” she said

of the decision to get in a car with an allegedly drunken driver.

The program is named for a statistic that someone is killed or

injured at the hands of a drunken driver every 15 minutes. Student

Christine Pieton organized it this year for her senior project.

Tuesday’s staged crash scene outside the high school brought home

the reality of an alcohol-related crash to the students

participating. Two students in one car were killed, as was Brandon’s

passenger, when his car struck them.

“When I sat down in the squad car and they tightened the ‘cuffs,

it felt like everything was real,” Brandon said. “All that was going

through my mind was: ‘How could I do that to innocent people?’”

Jackie Colgate, 17, played the passenger in Brandon’s car. She had

to play dead, with fake blood and injuries, as her parents and others

surveyed the scene.

“What I remember the most is the parents and hearing them freak

out,” she said. “It was way too realistic.”

Mary Rose Mamey, 17, died at the scene.

“It was disturbingly real,” she said. “They put me in a body bag

and in the hearse and actually buckled me in.”

Inside the courtroom, Brandon and the other students listened as

Andra Brockelscher read a statement about her son, Hendrick, also

killed in the crash. She talked about the graduation, the wedding,

the grandchildren she would never see.

“I had to tell myself it was not real,” she said after the trial.

“But I was still choking back the tears.”

Judge Craig Robison, who presided over the trial, sentenced

Brandon to 14 years in jail. Throughout the proceeding, the students

sat quietly. Some wiped away tears.

“This is what’s happening every 15 minutes,” Robison told them.

“It’s not fun.”