Southern Lee High School Students Experience Mock Fatal DUI Crash Scene | Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp

What happened:

A student at Southern Lee High School in Sanford, N.C. put together a mock crash in order to show his classmates the dangers and repercussions of drunk driving for a class project.  Senior Grant Carter, whose father is Lee County Sheriff Tracy Carter, brought two smashed-up cars to the school’s track, in which six students — four in an SUV and two in a sedan — were slumped over, covered in fake blood and pretending to be unconscious or worse. Several local fire departments responded to the “crash,” as well as a helicopter from Carolina Air Care and personnel from Central Carolina Hospital, the Sanford Police Department, Lee County Sheriff’s Office and North Carolina Highway Patrol.

During the demonstration, two of the passengers were ‘pronounced dead’ and their bodies were covered with blankets, with another student dressed up as the Grim Reaper stood over them. Then police had the driver perform several field sobriety tests before putting him in handcuffs and walking him past the bodies of his “dead” friends and into the back of a police car.

According to a report in the Sanford Herald, Cpl. Timothy Bolduc of the N.C. Highway Patrol told the crowd that in the two decades he has been an officer, he has made too many visits to families informing them of a loved one’s death. “I change a family in a matter of minutes,” he said. “… I’ve done it more times than I care to remember.”

 

The North Carolina Injury Lawyer Perspective:

We’ve reported on too many accidents where people have died because someone made the decision to get behind the wheel of a vechicle intoxicated. A 24 year old woman lost her life to a drunk driver whose blood alcohol was .13, way over the legal limit of .08. A 12 year-old little girl was killed when she was struck by a drunk driver, her body thrown 110 feet across the road.

Last year, 360 people died in alcohol-related crashes on North Carolina’s roads. Under state law, drunk drivers involved in fatal crashes can be charged with a number of serious crimes, including second-degree murder. According to the N.C. Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission, a second-degree murder conviction is punishable by a minimum of nearly eight years in jail, but more realistically is presumed to be between 10 and 13 years.

Southern Lee High School, Sanford, NC


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