By Kim Hilsenbeck.
The newspaper at right could have been a real headline and a real story; fortunately, the gruesome scene that played out on that chilly, overcast March morning was part of the Shattered Dreams program, aimed at preventing teens from drinking or texting and driving.
As more than 2,000 Hays High students watched, first responders from seven area agencies worked the mock wreck as if it were real. In the tableau, two cars and one moped were mangled while lifeless bodies lay on the cold asphalt or on the hood of a car. One student was trapped under an overturned car.
Students stood on both sides of the road, watching the scene unfold. Most were quiet, some were video taping and others were chatting. Two freshmen, Maritza Solis and Tyron Meredith, stood near sophomore Edward Rendon. All three looked on silently.
What did they think about Shattered Dreams?
Maritza said, “It teaches kids a lesson to not drive while drinking, and neither [to] text.”
Tyron and Edward said simultaneously, “It’s scary.”
Maritza added, “And so sad because people die.”
As lights flashed, firefighters, police and emergency services personnel performed all the jobs they normally would following a fatal wreck, including using the jaws of life to remove part of a car, placing accident victims on body boards for transport by helicopter or ambulance, and zipping those who died into body bags.
All the while, the Grim Reaper, played by volunteer Kyle fire fighter Mike Fulton in full reaper costume, slowly ambles around the accident, adding to the imagery of the deathly frightening scene.
The reaper also walks the school halls before and after the accident, silently calling the Living Dead students out from class, each symbolically representing a person who dies every 15 minutes, on average, from an accident involving drinking or texting and driving.
Wordlessly, the Grim Reaper taps a student on the shoulder. They walk out together.
A Hays County Sheriff’s Office deputy then walks in the same classroom and reads the obituary of the newly dead student. Meanwhile, the Living Dead are made up to look dead. In white faces with bruises and blood, they silently roam the school halls for the rest of the day wearing a t-shirt that says DEAD, not allowed to speak to anyone.
During the mock accident scene outside, Hays County Sheriff’s deputies gave Shelton a field sobriety test. She failed. Deputies arrested and cuffed her, read her Miranda rights and whisked her off to the Hays County Jail for processing. She had her mug shot taken and changed into a jail uniform.
Shelton then spent more than 90 minutes in a solitary confinement cell at the jail. She also had to call her parents, Shonna and Robert Shelton, to tell them she killed three people in a drunk driving accident.
Make-up artist, singer and Kyle native Andrew DeLeon, also a Hays High graduate, first saw Shattered Dreams his freshman year.
“I saw how it affected other students,” he said.
DeLeon recalls students crying but also mostly silent. A few laughed and made fun.
“Some people watch and laugh because they can’t relate to it,” he said. “Unfortunately, it takes something like [the mock accident] to realize something like this could happen. Though it is theatrical, it’s not a laughing matter – it’s something for a serious cause. It’s also a lesson for [the students’] families.”
He said he knew he wanted to get involved somehow and get an even bigger reaction. A former employee of Shattered Dreams head make-up artist John Claeton, DeLeon now participates in creating the mock scene.
In terms of the over-the-top make up and staged accident, which this year included splattered intestines on the road and tuffs of hair in the car grill, DeLeon said, “It has to be brutal to get the point across.”
