SOUTH OTSELIC – Otselic Valley Central School District students bore witness to a mock crash on Wednesday, organized by OVCS driver education and chemistry teacher Patricia Graham with the aid of the District Attorney's Office, Public Defender's Office, Norwich City Police Department, Chenango County Sheriff's Office, South Otselic Fire Department and many others.
The mock crash was intended to dissuade high schoolers from drinking and driving by illustrating the potential consequences in a rather graphic manner.
The students exited the school to discover a station wagon and a SUV congealed into one another, their mangled front portions intertwined where the two vehicles supposedly collided.
Fake blood matted the station wagon's side below the open windows while the interior of the two vehicles contained a total of five unmoving students. Empty beer cans littered the ground surrounding the station wagon.
In the scenario, the driver of the station wagon had been drinking and caused the crash, killing one passenger and seriously injuring another. The assembled students watched on, no doubt transfixed in horror, as the firefighters and EMS workers attempted to pull the crash victims from the mutilated vehicles. The drunk driver – played by OVCS senior Trevor Marston – was given a field sobriety test while the firefighters cut open the top of the station wagon.
Shortly afterwards and for the sake of brevity, the students were ushered into the school's multipurpose room where Marston already awaited trial. Filling the role of prosecutor was Chenango County First Assistant District Attorney Stephen M. Dunshee, while Zachary T. Wentworth from the Public Defender's Office acted as defense counsel. Although normally such a case would take around a year, the proceedings were understandably condensed. Found guilty after two brief court appearances of first degree vehicular manslaughter, “while such person has .18 of one per centum of more by weight of alcohol,” Marston was sentenced to three years hard time in the pen.
The mock court proceedings were also interjected with narratives of lamentable loss at the hands of drunk drivers.
“I have been to a scene of a fatality where alcohol was a factor,” said Dunshee when addressing the assembly subsequent to the mock trail's conclusion. “Blood was splattered everywhere, it was like a war zone … One kid lost their life and another girl lost her leg.”
Said Marston, “I have never liked drinking so I completely agree with what this was all about. I am glad I did it because now I understand how badly it can hurt people.”
“All of the drivers ed class worked really hard to put this together,” said Graham, who has been a member of the Otselic emergency squad for ten years. “I don't know how many times I have come out and it has been friends and family. I think this [the mock crash] gets kids thinking, at least they talk about it in class.”
When Graham first started working at OVCS there was an incident where a student who was drunk killed another student in a car crash. The school grew divided as friends of the victim squared off against friends of the drunk driver, proving there is often no end to the suffering caused by alcohol induced vehicular manslaughter.