Student touched many

As students in the Huntington Beach City School District returned to classes Wednesday, many were expected to come back weighed down by the traumatic death of a well-loved classmate — Danny Oates, the 14-year-old Sowers Middle School student killed after he was hit by a pickup truck while riding his bike last week. With school starting the day after Oates’ funeral at Saints Simon and Jude Catholic Church, administrators said they were prepared to offer whatever help they could to kids and teens struggling with painful emotions.

There are teams of psychologists at both Sowers Middle School and Hawes Elementary, where Oates attended and his younger siblings still do, district Supt. Roberta DeLuca said. Each school has safe rooms where students can go to vent their grief this week, and crisis counselors from the Orange County Department of Education have been brought in.

“Teachers know what to look for, the kinds of things that might be going on for the middle school students and the elementary students,” DeLuca said. “We think that we’re prepared to support our youngsters.”

It isn’t just kids who have grappled with the death of the well-known Oates boy. Hundreds gathered last week in Le Bard Park to remember Oates, a Huntington Beach boy whose death just a day earlier was still sinking in. Many got their news of the memorial from makeshift signs put up at the site of his death, which became a shrine to his life. The tribute was full of messages from classmates, teammates and neighbors.

“When my grandma told me, I thought he just broke his leg,” younger sister Lexie Oates told the crowd, choking back tears. “But when I found out, it broke my heart.”

The Ford F-150 truck that swerved left across Indianapolis Avenue near Everglades Lane hit and killed Oates even though he was in the bike lane and wearing a helmet. Twenty-year-old driver Jeffrey F. Woods was injured seriously as well when his truck crashed through a palm tree and a cinder-block wall before coming to rest in someone’s backyard. A full investigation of the crash will take weeks, police said.

Oates was riding to Isaac L. Sowers Middle School with a friend to pick up his class schedule; he would have started eighth grade there Tuesday. The friend was not harmed.

Logan Miller, who played soccer with Danny, echoed many at the memorial by calling him a “gentle giant.”

“He was the biggest guy on the team, but he was always afraid of knocking you down,” he said.

At the same time, many said Oates was full of energy, constantly occupied with Huntington Beach Junior Lifeguards, soccer and baseball teams, and other athletic pursuits. Some of Oates’ kinetic attitude came across in an often-repeated story about his habits on weekends: Several teens and parents said he would show up unannounced at 7 a.m., walk in the door and say “Let’s go!” — sometimes eating mass quantities of his neighbors’ food in the process.

“Danny totally rocked,” said Brad Hepburn, whose son was a friend of Oates’. “He was high-speed, hard core, and he never gave up. He touched more people than most do in their lifetimes.”