By DENISE R. FREELAND
News Leader Staff Writer
On a sunny afternoon, two teenage girls lay still on the grass outside Minerva High School, blood staining their formal gowns. Nearby, one of their classmates was trapped in a mangled car and another underwent a sobriety test, before being arrested.
This scene, which has followed too many junior/senior proms, was, in this case, a simulation, and the students were officers of Students Against Destructive Decisions.
The Minerva Volunteer Fire Department was first on the scene on Stadium Street, May 5, followed by state troopers, Bartley Ambulance, Minerva Police officers, and a Med Flight helicopter.
As troopers Scott Louive and William Lee, both Minerva graduates, talked with the driver, sophomore Aaron Burman, MVFD and Bartley personnel stabilized Sally Schmachtenberger, who was trapped in the car, and used the Jaws of Life to free her.
Bartley personnel also checked the other two girls, Shan Lin and Kelsee Fankhauser, and, as the entire student body watched quietly, covered their bodies with sheets.
After Schmachtenberger was extricated, she was put on a stretcher, then into an ambulance, and driven to the helicopter.
Three days later, Burman was put on trial in the MHS gymnasium. Minerva graduates Bob Clark and Clark Battista served as defense and prosecuting attorneys respectively, and Judge Robert Lavery presided over the trial.
Nina Mock, organizer of the mock accident and trial, stood in for the police officers, who were unable to attend, as a witness, and Schmachtenberger was also called to testify.
After the testimony, Burman changed his plea to "guilty," and was sentenced to 10 years in state prison, a lifetime suspension of his driver's license, and a $5,000 fine for each of the counts for Lin's and Fankhauser's deaths, and one year in state prison, a three-year suspension of his driver's license, and a $2,500 fine for the count dealing with Schmachtenberger's injuries.
"Where's the bailiff," Lavery snapped. "Get him out of here!"
Following the trial, Lavery passed on some lessons he has learned as a judge and in the 10 years he spent prosecuting drunk drivers. He noted that the person killed is not usually the one driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but a passenger in the car.
"If somebody does something stupid, pulls out a joint or decides to drink and drive, get out of the car," Lavery said. "If you lose a friend, you lose a friend. It's better than being in a car with a drunk driver. If you have to walk home, you walk home."
He also noted that Minerva students drive "two of the most dangerous routes in the county, maybe in northeast Ohio," U.S. Route 30 and state Route 183. In the past 12 years, he said, there have been 15 fatalities on U.S. Route 30 between Minerva and East Canton.
Lavery also told the students the story of his own junior/senior prom, 40 years ago, before which he took his date to dinner at Tangiers Restaurant in Akron. At the next table were four of his classmates, and the boys were drinking from a flask. Everyone laughed about it, he said, but that night, one of the girls was killed when she and her date were involved in an accident.
"No one thinks this happens to them. I used to be like that," Lavery said.
Lavery presented the officers of SADD with a $5,000 donation from an educational fund, which results from a $25 contribution from every drunk-driving fine. Alliance and Marlington high schools also received $5,000 donations.