Teens Helping Teens to Move on After Tragedy

(Columbia) - While they are moving on, students and teachers at Dutch Fork High School still remember the beginning of November last year when they heard the news.

"The whole school was just devastated. There aren't really words to describe it," says teacher Kelly Payne.

Three students killed in two accidents was a lot to process. Megan Preston, a senior at the school, collided with a train on Halloween night and died on November 13th. Then, on November 18th, 16-year-old Grant Gallagher and 17-year-old Francis Nguyen were killed in another collision.

Payne decided to go into action.

"I wasn't quite sure what, but I knew I wanted to do something to help the kids," she says.

She, along with the South Carolina Chapter of the National Safety Council, brought the Alive at 25 program to the school.

While Driver's Ed teaches the techniques of driving, like blinkers and backing up, Alive at 25 teaches about behaviors of driving. Distracting ones may cause accidents, like talking on your cell phone, eating and drinking. The program also talks about driving under the influence.

Samantha Caldwell, a senior involved in raising awareness about the program, was a friend of one of the victims. "This was my way of helping myself cope and everyone else at the school," she says.

Caldwell has seen first hand the effect the program has had on the students. "I can tell going out of the parking lot, there aren't as many people on their cell phones and they don't speed out of the parking lot."

Students at Dutch Fork say the class works because it doesn't talk down to the students. Instead, they have discussions with the off-duty law enforcement officers that teach the program.

Senior Iouli Burroughs hopes the program can help students before it's too late. "Hopefully, no one else will have to go through that to realize they don't need to do that. Hopefully, they can learn it from a class," he says.

To date, 3,200 students have completed the program. It's now mandatory at Dutch Fork and is available at 9 high school across the state. The SC National Safety Council is working with lawmakers and law enforcement to increase those numbers.

If you'd like more information, go to the Safety Council's website at www.scnsc.org.