MONROE — Their plans for college were read over the loudspeakers.
Their school clubs. Their grades. Their hobbies.
Drama students at Monroe High School on Thursday acted out a pretend drunken-driving crash on the football field. Their classmates filled the bleachers to watch.
In the play, a student died. Another was critically wounded.
The message was clear: There is too much ahead, and the future is too important, to make a bad decision on prom night.
Monroe police and firefighters helped organize the drill, aimed at reminding students to stay safe before and after this weekend’s prom. That means no drinking and driving, and no getting into cars with impaired drivers, they were told.
Even students too young for prom face that decision someday, Principal John Lombardi said.
The assembly started with black tarps obscuring the cars, which were positioned to resemble a T-bone wreck. As the tarps were lifted, the stadium filled with the young actresses’ cries and sobs.
“Pieces of plastic and metal shatter on the ground,” Washington State Patrol trooper Heather Axtman told the crowd. “Both vehicles are steaming.”
Empty beer bottles rolled from opened doors.
Senior Kyle Bailey played the role of the drunken driver. He stumbled from the scene as firefighter Rusty Hunt approached carrying an orange plastic backboard.
Axtman continued to narrate: “(Kyle) wanted to go college,” she said. “Now he’s going to prison. Felony vehicular homicide.”
The trooper described the fate of another student in the skit: “None of her family and friends will be able to see her continue her dreams,” she said.
Medics led away two girls. Caylee Kearns wore a boy’s tuxedo jacket draped over her royal blue satin gown.
After the play, Bailey, an aspiring paleontologist, said he wanted to make people think about drunken driving and “know the risk and the harm it could cause.”
Kearns wants to be a makeup artist. She’s also active in choir.
“I was hoping this experience, and my friends seeing me in this situation, will push them not to make stupid decisions,” she said.
A Monroe firefighter stopped by to invite the troupe to tour the fire station after school.
The boys said they couldn’t go. They had to pick up their tuxes.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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