Tonight, at about eight o’clock, a woman and three teenage girls were riding in a white SUV, wearing their seat belts, doing exactly what they should. And, from out of nowhere, a man from New Mexico in a red SUV plowed into them, doing somewhere between 70 and 100 mph. Witnesses say he never slowed, never swerved. He didn’t even try to miss them. Police don’t know why. He wasn’t drunk, or under the influence of drugs, or suicidal. They say there was nothing the woman could have done, to avoid that accident.
The white SUV flipped several times, took out a utility pole and a light pole, and dropped back into the street. Three of the occupants were badly injured. But one, Eryn, a student at my school, was flung out of her seatbelt and killed.
She was thirteen.