“I’m the girl who got killed,” said an otherwise healthy-looking Lauryn Jones as drama teacher Healy Rodman dabbed bloody wounds onto her face and head with theatrical paint.
Jones was about to take part in Operation Prom Night in the football stadium at St. Edward Central Catholic High School in Elgin Tuesday afternoon, a program by the Elgin Police Department, Elgin Fire Department and AAA Chicago to underline how easy it is for risky driving to turn the upcoming spring dance season into a teen tragedy.
As St. Ed’s 400 students watched from the stands, police and fire personnel showed in lurid fashion what would happen if a car containing two drunken, careless young men had crashed head-on into a car containing two other prom-goers. The event even included the landing of a Flight for Life helicopter at mid-field to carry away the most seriously “injured” surviving victim.
As the students took their seats, the four actors took their places. Portraying the drunk driver who had caused the crash, St. Ed’s senior Christian Arboleda sat in the driver’s seat of a battered red Chevrolet Blazer. As the simulation began, Arboleda got out of his vehicle, uninjured, shouted some angry words about the crash that supposedly had just happened (which he blamed on the other driver) and threw some empty beer cans at the vehicle he had struck.
Alongside him, playing the drunk’s passenger, was Elgin Police Parking Control Officer Jose Gutierrez, so seriously injured he shouted that he was unable to move.
“This is my chance for Hollywood,” the gorily-made-up young cop joked.
In the vehicle that had been struck head-on, a black Chevy Blazer, the hurting driver was played by Kasey Cooke. And in the passenger seat, the bloody head of his pretend girlfriend and prom date Jones hung limp as it dangled out of the SUV’s open window.
Over a loud speaker, the event’s narrator, Police Officer Lorenz Burkert, explained the situation and played a 911-center recording of what a first radio call to respond to such a crash might sound like. The recorded dispatcher ordered two police cars to investigate a vehicle crash with injuries at 555 Locust St.
Two squad cars rolled into the stadium with sirens and flashing lights on. The officers got out, sized up the situation and radioed for more police, plus an ambulance and fire truck.
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Traffic officers Larry Jenco, Ron Spejcher and Jim Raap determined that the drunk driver was not seriously injured and began putting him through series of DUI tests, such as having him walk in various ways. They also began pulling empty Champagne bottles out of his vehicle. Fire department paramedics, meanwhile, covered the dead girl with a yellow plastic sheet and began using extrication equipment to pull the cars apart in order to free the two injured boys.
Determining that one was injured very seriously, they radioed a request for a Flight to Life helicopter to come and fly him to a trauma center.
Charlene Sligting, representing AAA Chicago and its Operation Click project, took over the loud speaker and told the crowd that St. Ed has a special reason to be proud: She said spot checks of cars have found that statewide 94.1 percent of Illinois drivers wear seatbelts. In Elgin, random police checks have found that 96 percent do. But when an Elgin cop and members of the high school’s 75-strong SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) Club did spot inspections of kids driving onto the campus five times this year, Sligting announced, they found that 100 percent of St. Ed’s students were wearing those life-saving belts.
The teens cheered as if the Green Wave had just scored six points.
As the suspected drunk was taken away in handcuffs to face a charge of reckless homicide, paramedics lifted the two injured boys onto gurneys and wheeled them to an ambulance.
The traffic officers began photographing the whole scene using laser cameras that determine distances. Soon a team of people carrying another gurney went over to lift the yellow sheet off the limp girl in her fancy prom dress, to photograph her and to carry her away. These were not paramedics but real-life technicians from the Kane County Morgue.
That’s the most important reason to remember not to drink and not to text and not to be distracted and to wear your seatbelts, Burkert told the crowd as Jones was zipped into a body bag.
“Prom is just one night,'” Burkert said over the speaker. “But this is forever.”
AAA and the Elgin first responders planned to do a similar demonstration, though without a helicopter, Wednesday morning at Larkin High School. Sgt. Kevin Senne of the Elgin Police Traffic Unit said they had also planned to do one at Elgin High School earlier this spring but that had to be canceled.
Standing in the sidelines, Father Edward Seisser, the school’s superintendent, said he is proud of how large and active St. Ed’s SADD Club has been, but these lessons must always be repeated.
For more information about teen driving safety, visit TEENDRIVING.AAA.COM.