FOUNTAIN VALLEY - A staging of a car accident Thursday in front of Fountain Valley High School for the Every 15 Minutes program echoed a similar, very real incident that affected members of the student body last November.
"My friend Natasha, she died of this, and seeing this kind of reminded me of her. It really did break my heart," said Elizabeth Messick, a senior who took part in the program that aims to reduce alcohol-related collisions.
"I really think everyone here should really take in the fact that this could happen to you."
But aside from Messick's comments, there was no mention of the Nov. 18 accident that killed Natasha Dannov, a 2007 graduate, on her 18th birthday in a crash on the I-5 freeway in San Diego County.
Her best friend, Marian Teri Kahale, is now facing a charge of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated for allegedly driving the sport utility vehicle they were in.
Kahale has a hearing set for May 7 in San Diego's North County courthouse.
School principal Chris Herzfeld said there were several reasons for not mentioning the accident.
"There are too many people here who are friends and family of the two people involved" and a mention of the accident wouldn't "allow you to process the information in a broader sense," said Herzfeld, after the Friday assembly where the staged events were discussed.
Herzfeld said that it would be difficult to discuss the event because it could bring up emotions of anger and frustration from friends and family. He doesn't, however, dismiss talk about the accident in the future.
It "might be something in a year or two that will be very, very powerful for us because it will be 'These were Fountain Valley students who did this.' But right now I think it's too close," he said.
Herzfeld said that he received an e-mail from a community member soon after the accident who challenged the effectiveness of the Every 15 Minutes program.
"I was very upset about that because, yes, there was an incident; yes, there was drinking and driving; yes, somebody died, but I've been here for eight years and that's the first (accident) in my eight years that's involved a student or a recent graduate," he said.
That adds up to about 24,000 students in eight years, he said.
Every "message isn't going to get to everyone every time, but that doesn't mean that you stop giving the message," Herzfeld said.
As part of the alcohol awareness program, which is sponsored by the Fountain Valley Police Department and other organizations throughout the city, a student is pulled out of the classroom every 15 minutes to represent the statistic that someone in the United States is killed in an alcohol-related incident every 15 minutes.
These students become known as the "living dead" after they return to the classroom a few minutes later with zombie makeup and a coroner's tag.
A car accident is staged, and police and emergency responders show what they do at the scene of an accident including conducting a field sobriety test, transporting the injured to a hospital and covering up the dead for the coroner to pick up.
The program is held every other year at Fountain Valley High.
