Grim reminder of DUI consequences

NEWPORT BEACH — When Malik Agzour was 7 years old, a drunk driver killed his cousin. On Tuesday, Malik, 17, watched as Newport Beach police and fire crews pulled one of his classmates from an overturned SUV on 15th Street next to Newport Harbor High School in a mock crash exercise as part of a DUI prevention program.

As the Malik watched fire fighters pull Rush Stevens, 17, from the SUV and Amber Munnelly and Paige Wallace from a Toyota sedan also involved in the crash, he experienced a sense of closure with his own past. Nick Frazier, a fourth person involved in the crash, lay on the ground, missing one shoe. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

“I always wondered what it was like,” Malik said. “It kind of made me feel better” to see how it happens. And it just so happened that he would get a chance to get a first-hand experience of the aftermath of such an accident.

The mock crash, held at 11 a.m. in front of the school, initiated nearly two days of the national DUI prevention program Every 15 Minutes. In addition to the crash, Newport Harbor students were taken from their classrooms every 15 minutes throughout the day — symbolizing the frequency with which lives are lost to DUIs — with their faces painted white, marked as one of the walking dead.

Malik was one of these students. A police officer pulled him out of class and had an obituary written by his parents read to the students. In all, 21 students would spend the rest of the day going through the motions of what happens as the result of a fatal traffic collision. Parents of the participating students received death notifications from the police, and some went to the mortuary to identify the bodies of their children.

“It’s hard to say who it impacts the most,” event coordinator and teacher Keira Kirby said.

“You’re dealing with a bunch of teens not thinking about their mortality,” said School Resource Officer Steve Martinez.

The scene affected many students emotionally and physically. One girl nearly fainted after watching the aftermath of the crash.

“It scares you,” said member of the walking dead, Carlo Urquidez, 17.

“I haven’t actually seen anything like that,” Carlo’s friend and fellow walking dead member, Jordan Garza, 18, said.

The events can have a ripple effect on people, Kirby said. It’s the behind-the-scenes stuff that really affects the students and their families.

“It also gets the parents thinking,” Martinez said, especially when they are asked to write obituaries about their children. An assembly today in the school’s auditorium will include a video summarizing the events, and the parents of a teenager who was fatally injured by a DUI motorist will discuss the tragic experience.

For Malik, the reality of the event was all too clear, as flashbacks of his cousin’s death came back.

“He looked after me when I was younger,” Malik said. “I don’t want anyone else to go through that kind of scenario.”

Funding for the program is provided by grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.