After Ninth Md. Death In the Past Two Weeks, Another School Grieves
By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
It was an uncomfortably familiar scene at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville last night: students gathered to remember classmates suddenly lost. Like young people in La Plata, Calvert County and Wheaton in recent weeks, these students came to mourn friends killed in cars driven by teenagers.
Oswaldo Rosales and Ricardo Orellana, 16-year-old Montgomery students who died after the car they were riding in struck a tree Monday, brought to nine the number of teenagers killed on suburban Maryland roads in two weeks. And last night, two teenagers were critically injured when their car flipped over in Anne Arundel County.
"This time it really hit close to home," Nicole Masoudpour, 18, a recent graduate who helped teach English to Rosales two years ago, said of the Rockville crash. "I don't think teenagers realize how truly serious this is."
Behind her, several dozen teenagers and adults, holding lighted candles, formed semicircles around photographs of the two teens.
"It's like a life-changing experience," Marvin Sandoval, 16, said after school yesterday, talking with other friends of the two students who died. "You put yourself in their position, and you really think: That could have been me."
Just a day earlier, Rosales and Orellana had lingered on campus, part of an informal group that often stayed after classes to help a teacher or take merengue lessons, several students said. The two often caught rides home with another student, Jose Miguel Gomez, 19, who was driving the car Monday, the students said. Gomez is recovering from injuries not considered life-threatening.
"Everyone has been down all day," said Vanessa Carrasco, 16. "People realize that we're never going to see them again."
Police said Gomez was driving a 1997 Nissan Altima south on Avery Road, a winding lane with no shoulders along the RedGate Golf Course near Norbeck Road. He apparently lost control; no other vehicle was involved.
Rosales, of Sandy Spring, who was in the front passenger seat, died Monday. Orellana, of Rockville, died yesterday. Montgomery County police said they thought only the driver was wearing a seat belt. They are investigating the accident's cause and said they could not say whether excessive speed or alcohol played a role.
The high school informed parents in a letter that counselors have been made available for students and staff members. Some of the teens' friends, students said, gathered in a classroom after school to discuss the tragedy.
"Both Oswaldo and Ricardo were bright, kind and vibrant students who were well liked by their peers," the letter said. "Their teachers described them as caring, high achieving and promising students."
At Rosales's house on Norwood Road, his family was mourning a son and brother they described as active and scholastic. Rosales was an honors student who loved to read and fish on the Chesapeake Bay, they said. He had a keen interest in government.
"He told me he wanted to be a lawyer," said his father, Humberto, who stood in the yard with friends and family members, many of them hugging and in tears. Humberto Rosales, a landscaper, said he brought his family here from El Salvador 11 years ago.
He disputed police and media reports that his son was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident. Buckling up is a strict family rule, he said. "Oswaldo used to say that he wasn't comfortable unless he was wearing his seat belt," said Juan Caceres, a family friend.
Just before 7 last night in Anne Arundel, a 16-year-old girl and a 19-year-old woman suffered life-threatening injuries when their car left the road in the 600 block of Brock Bridge Road and flipped over in the Maryland City area, east of Laurel. Two other people in the car were injured less seriously.
The critically injured teenagers were flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, as was a 20-year-old man, said Michael Cox, a county fire department spokesman.
A fourth person, whom Cox could not identify, was taken to Laurel Regional Hospital with minor injuries. The cause of the crash was under investigation last night.
The Anne Arundel crash was the latest in a string of accidents involving teens in the Maryland suburbs. The deadliest was a Nov. 6 crash in which four friends from La Plata were killed. None was wearing a seat belt. A day earlier, two teenagers on their way to school in Calvert County were fatally injured in a collision between their vehicle and a box truck.
Another fatality, involving a 17-year-old, came Nov. 12 in Montgomery when a vehicle hit a tree in the Wheaton area. None of the four occupants of that car was licensed to drive, police said.
In the La Plata crash, the driver was too young under Maryland law to have teenage passengers.
The accidents have occurred despite laws passed in 2005 to tighten control over younger drivers. Maryland's graduated system prohibits licensed teenage drivers from carrying passengers younger than 18 who are not immediate family members during their first five months of driving unless an adult is in the car. Teens are also barred from driving between midnight and 5 a.m. and from using a cellphone behind the wheel during their first two years of driving.
At 19, Gomez is old enough to carry passengers who are not family members.
For parents of novice drivers, the news of another fatal crash involving a teenager was sobering. Adolfo Castro, waiting in the pickup lane at Richard Montgomery yesterday, said he won't allow his 17-year-old son to drive anywhere except to school and back without an adult.
"I spent two years teaching him to drive even before he got his license, and after a year I'm still driving with him," Castro said. "Not enough parents do that."
Castro's daughter, Gabriella, 15, was a friend of the two students who were killed and was often Orellana's partner in dance class. "He was better than anyone," she said. "He was a natural showoff."
Friends had planned to hold their vigil at the site of the crash. But school administrators, fearing another tragedy on the narrow road, persuaded them to gather on the school grounds.
Staff writer Clarence Williams contributed to this report.
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