Nik Gray didn’t like seeing his friends, Abby Leonard and Austen Dahl, involved in a “deadly” two-car accident — even if it was a DUI drill at Bothell High.
Thursday morning, while the senior class watched and some upcoming graduates participated, Bothell Fire and EMS staged the event, which featured two wrecked cars, “injured and deceased” students and a host of emergency vehicles and a helicopter to drive home the message that drinking and driving don’t mix.
“Seeing my friends hurt, that was pretty deep,” Gray said, adding that he heard the no-drinking-and-driving bulletin loud and clear. “That’s been a thing that my mom has made pretty clear to me not to do, under any circumstance not to ever do that.”
Added Dahl, who was the drunken driver in the drill: “It’s definitely going to be one of those heavy-weighted things that makes it so I don’t want to drink and drive. It’s really shown me what’s going to happen if I do get a DUI or something like that happens — and getting arrested is not fun in any case.”
Leonard played the dead girl in the drill, stretched across the hood of one car in a green prom dress. It was an emotional experience for the senior, who hammered the day’s message home in a sorrowful speech — from the victim’s perspective — to her classmates.
“It was hard putting yourself in those shoes,” she told the Reporter. “If that was actually to happen, having to not see my sister graduate or having to (not) say goodbye to my mom… it was very emotional.”
Bothell Police Chief Carol Cummings said that drinking or using drugs while driving can have an impact on everyone involved in an accident.
“Those consequences will affect the friends that they may kill or injure, their future of where they go, whether they’re going to go to college or whether they’re going to spend the next several years in jail,” she said.
Bothell High principal Bob Stewart attended the funeral of two of his students — who died in a drinking-and-driving accident — at a different school 28 years ago.
“It stays with me to this day,” he told the students. “Please, for everybody who loves you, and that includes me, make good choices as we move through the year-end. I want all of you to be at commencement, I want all of you to get to that college or whatever it is you’re doing next fall.”
