CRASH COURSE
City’s annual mock crash event paints a sobering picture of impaired driving
WOONSOCKET — The sobering realities of impaired driving and its sometimes fatal consequences were brought home in graphic detail during the Woonsocket Public Safety Division and Education Department’s annual mock crash event, a bloody, no-holds-barred reenactment staged Tuesday for the entire Woonsocket High School graduating Class of 2018.
As the seniors prepare for graduation on Friday and the celebrations to follow, the mock crash at the Dionne Track on Cumberland Hill Road was an opportunity to remind the soon-to-be graduates about the negative impact destructive decisions can have on their lives and the lives of others.
The reenactment was played out in the parking lot where students watched firefighters, police officers and EMTs respond to a horrific two-car crash involving a teen drunk driver. Graduating seniors and school theater students Katrina Kurowski, Calvin Bessette, Kahlyl Roberson and Megan McGlashing played the roles of the two vehicles’ occupants.
The students were taken through the entire accident from the time the first patrol officer arrives on the scene to the arrival of firefighters armed with hydraulic rescue tools, paramedics, distraught parents, a hearse from a nearby funeral home and the Boston MedFlight helicopter, which landed in the nearby field for a mock airlift transfer to a trauma center.
A passenger in the impaired driver’s mangled car was killed, her lifeless body ejected through the windshield onto the hood of the car. As the drunk driver was being given a field sobriety test, EMTS treated and extracted the two passengers in the other car, one of which was strapped to a stretcher and led to the waiting helicopter.
With their blood-spattered clothing,
gaping wounds and piercing screams, the students’ performances left an indelible mark on many of the students who watched the reenactment from behind yellow police tape.
Among those in the crowd watching were Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, Police Chief Thomas F. Oates III and School Superintendent Patrick McGee.
The most chilling moment was when an actor playing the deceased girl’s mother ran onto the parking lot set screaming and crying as paramedics covered the body of her daughter with a sheet.
“When the mother came out of nowhere screaming, it was so realistic. I wasn’t expected that,” said Janae Brown, a senior who graduates on Friday. “It kind of left me teary-eyed.”
“It’s so realistic,” said fellow student Jaelin Jackson. “When you see what actually happens, it makes you think.”
Woonsocket Fire Chief Paul Shatraw said the intent of the hour-long event was to deliver a message to the students about making smart choices and not make mistakes that will affect them for the rest of their lives.
He said the mock crash scenes were graphic lessons on what can happen when one is drunk or distracted while behind the wheel.
“This is as realistic as it gets and it’s exactly what we do when a tragic accident like this happens,” he said.
Every day, almost 29 people in the United States die in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes – that’s one person every 50 minutes in 2016. Drunk-driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades; however, drunk-driving crashes claim more than 10,000 lives per year.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, car crashes are the leading cause of death for teens, and about a quarter of those crashes involve an underage drinking driver. In 2016, young drivers 16-24 made up 39 percent of drivers involved in fatal alcohol-impaired crashes.
After the mock exercise was complete, the students gathered in the high school auditorium for a lecture and power point presentation about the results of destructive decisions and situational awareness presented by Deputy Fire Chief Roger Perreault and Patrolman Jason Berthelette.