http://youtu.be/OdBSaSpaJI0
First responders arrived at the collision near Interstate 70 and Mesa Grande Drive to the sight of mangled metal, splattered blood and crushed cans of beer.
Fortunately, this was just a drill. But organizers of Shattered Lives of Doña Ana County, a drunken driving awareness and prevention campaign for area high schools, say they hope students who witness and take part in the exercise experience it like the real thing.
About 30 students participated in the Shattered Lives program, made possible through joint efforts by city, county and state law enforcement as well as U.S. Border Patrol and local hospitals. Oñate High School Junior DeAngelo Maestas was chosen to play to the drunken driver. Maestas said playing the part was an eye-opening experience he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget.
“I felt more and more worse, I felt guiltier for being that person who caused it,” Maestas said. “Even though I didn’t do anything and they just asked me to play this part, I felt worse and worse being there and being the cause of this.”
Maestas said he didn’t expect acting in the crash to emotionally affect him, but as the event progressed, things changed.
“I started to tear up, it really hit me hard and just pretty much the entire time it hit me in the squad car because you know I have this woman who’s yelling at me that I took her daughter and then also the officers speaking the entire time saying you know if DeAngelo Maestas would have not made this one mistake, this one decision, all these people would be okay, I wouldn’t be getting arrested and so just all that accumulated in the cop car and it really just hit me hard,” Maestas said.
First responders used the Jaws of Life to extract victims from the wreckage. Critically injured passengers were transported by ambulances and airlifted to Mountain View Regional Medical Center as another student was pronounced dead at the scene.
Shattered Lives organizer Carmen Martinez played the part of the distraught mother and said she’s been with the program since 1999. Martinez said she was a drunken driver herself at one point and got involved once she realized the severity of her actions.
“It was pretty hard for me to accept the fact that I could have killed somebody. I could have killed somebody’s son, daughter, father, mother, sister, brother and I decided to join the program to try to make a difference with these kids,” Martinez said.
In addition to the crash, an electrocardiogram flatlined over the school’s intercom every 15 minutes to represent lives lost to drunken driving.
Volunteers dressed as the Grim Reaper visited classrooms throughout the day to remove students. Students who were chosen became part of the “living dead” while police officers read classmates a mock obituary written by the student’s family.
28 people in the U.S. die in alcohol-related crashes every day according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drunken driving resulted in more than 10,000 deaths in 2015 and accounted for nearly a third of all traffic-related deaths. In New Mexico, data from the Department of Transportation shows 145 people died from alcohol-involved crashes in 2017, nearly 40 percent of total traffic deaths in the state.
Ruth Villegas is the director of emergency services at Mountain View Regional Medical Center She said the hospital’s trauma team treats students like real patients to make things as realistic as possible. But she said drunken driving isn’t the only problem.
“Texting and driving is huge and the injuries related to that. People will come in with blunt trauma, a lot of lacerations, broken legs, broken feet, broken arms based on the accident that had occurred,” Villegas said.
Martinez said the program’s goal to reduce drunken driving is working. She said participants from 10 years ago still thank her for her work and for changing their lives.
“I don’t want these kids to be in a situation to where they’re gonna harm someone else and then they’re gonna have to live with the consequences. Once you kill somebody or injure somebody or paralyze somebody, you’re stuck with that for the rest of your life. Not only did you cause damage to the other individual, you’re causing damage to your own self, your family and everybody that loves you,” Martinez said. “I just wish these kids would understand don’t drink and drive, it’s not worth it. It is not worth it. You don't want to live with the fact that you took a life. You're not gonna be able to live with that. If you have a conscience, you won't be able to live with that.”
For students like Maestas who took part in the drill, the message was clear. Maestas said he hopes students watching think twice and act if they see someone else trying to drive home.
“I definitely think this will have an impact on it because you can always say, it’s just a statistic, people should have made better decisions but whenever you’re presented with that situation in front of you, you have the roads blocked off, you have a helicopter fly in, you have the police, the paramedics, the fire department there… seeing all that together, I hope it does and I’m pretty sure it left some kind of mark on everyone that was there just from all the things that they experienced and the things that they saw that day,” Maestas said.
Shattered Lives organizers said they hope this is the closest experience students have with drinking and driving.
