Mourners described an unrelenting sense of shock and anguish Thursday as they remembered four Buffalo Grove High School students at a memorial near the site of a three-car crash that took the teens’ lives two days prior.
The crowd of hundreds included the high school’s principal, Jeff Wardle, who said “the pain has been almost unbearable the last couple days.”
“But I think, as you see, we are coming together,” he said, motioning to the ever-growing memorial. “And it’s an incredible community.”
By Thursday afternoon, dozens of floral bouquets and more than 100 memorial candles lined a strip of sidewalk near Dundee and Schoenbeck roads in Wheeling, where the crash occurred late Tuesday.
Several posters created in tribute to the victims featured the smiling faces of the four teens killed in the crash, which police said appeared to be primarily caused by “speed and a disregarded traffic signal.”
Ricky Barcenas, 17, of Arlington Heights, was a varsity soccer player at Buffalo Grove High School.
Richard De-Ita, 18, of Wheeling, was scheduled to graduate from high school next week; relatives said his family had been planning a big party to celebrate the milestone.
Kevin Hernandez-Teran, 17, of Wheeling, hoped to become a fashion designer one day, according to a GoFundMe account raising money for his funeral.
Jesus Rodriguez, 16, of Wheeling, was described as a loving brother and son, who worked hard to help his parents, according to a GoFundMe site organized by his sister.
“I do not have the words to tell how much he will be missed,” she wrote on the fundraising site.
Buffalo Grove High School has been closed due to a small fire
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in the building earlier this week, but the principal said parts of the school that were not affected by the blaze were open for several hours on Thursday for grieving students who wanted to speak with school counselors.District officials said school will be back in session on Friday.
Neighbors near the crash scene described hearing a loud noise late Tuesday that sounded like an explosion, followed by a power outage caused by the accident. Fire departments from a half-dozen suburbs responded to the accident, officials said, extracting six of the seven people involved in the crash.
Wheeling police said a 17-year-old was injured in the crash and remains in the intensive care unit at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge; that teen had been a passenger in the car with the four victims who were killed.
The two drivers of the other cars involved in the crash were treated for non-life-threatening injuries at local hospitals, authorities said. Wheeling police said the crash is still under investigation and had no updates on Thursday.
At the memorial site, some grievers sobbed and some hugged one another; the throng of classmates, friends and relatives spilled out onto Dundee Road, which authorities partially blocked off to traffic with orange cones to make space for those who came to grieve.
The mourners occasionally stepped over and around a city light pole that lay horizontal on the grass, a vestige of the crash.
Eighteen-year-old Ingrid Victoria lamented that her friend, crash victim De-Ita, didn’t live to attend his high school graduation next week.
“It’s so close,” she said, adding that he will be with her in spirit when she graduates. “I’m definitely going to take him along when I walk.”
Fifteen-year-old Taylor Malone recalled taking a class last year with Barcenas and other students who were older than her. She was the only freshman and didn’t know anyone else, but Barcenas would always talk to her and offer to be her partner on class projects, she said.
“He was always just a real sweet person, nice to everyone,” she said.
She added that news of the fatal crash “was a shock.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said.
Freshman Leila Rodriguez left two framed collages of photos of herself and crash victim Jesus Rodriguez at the memorial site.
“He was just the best friend to me,” she said, tearing up, adding that “my whole mind was gone” when she heard about the crash.
She also recalled how Hernandez-Teran was always a calming force for everyone around him.
“Kevin always said, ‘Don’t stress — be at peace,'” she said.
One of the poster boards at the crash site was inscribed with a quote attributed to Hernandez-Teran: “Life is too beautiful to be stressed.”
“Rest in peace,” reads another poster board with photos of all four teens, a rosary hanging over the message.