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Snyder Fire Department personnel attempted to extricate “victims” during a simulated automobile accident in Towle Park Thursday. The simulated crash was part of the Shattered Dreams program, designed to show Snyder High School students the effects of drinking and driving.
Shattered bodies. Shattered lives. Shattered dreams.
Over a two-day period, Snyder High School students learned first-hand the perils involved in drunk driving through Shattered Dreams.
On Thursday in Towle Park, students observed as first responders staged a two-vehicle accident involving a drunk driver in which two students were killed, four others seriously hurt and one jailed on multiple drunk-driver charges.
Today, however, was all about reality.
During an assembly at Worsham Auditorium, students heard from Laura Cranfill, a Copperas Cove mother who lost her son as the result of a head-on collision with a drunk driver in 2003.
Cranfill, who still walks with the aid of a walker as a result of the injuries she sustained in the wreck, told the students about the crash that took the life of her 12-year-old son, Tyler, and seriously injured her and her 10-year-old daughter, Katie.
The family had driven to southern Indiana to visit family members, Cranial said. On their way home to Texas, their vehicle was struck head-on by a car traveling at 93 mph on a Tennessee highway.
Tyler, who was riding in the front passenger seat, survived a few hours before succumbing to his injuries. Laura, who was driving, and Katie, who was riding in the passenger portion of the car, sustained numerous broken bones and internal injuries.
The drunk driver and passenger of the other vehicle both died in the crash.
“Because of a choice — or a lack of a choice — that someone made, this is what we’re left with for the rest of our lives,” Laura said.
Her first memory after the crash was nine days afterward, she said. In the interim, services for her son were held in Fort Worth and Copperas Cove.
“As a parent, you don’t plan to go to your child’s funeral. That’s just not the natural order of things,” Cranfill said. “But that was something else I didn’t get to have a choice about — I couldn’t go to Tyler’s funeral.”
Surprisingly, Laura doesn’t hold bad feelings toward the drunk driver and his passenger.
“I’m sure they weren’t bad people. They just made a terrible choice,” she said.
Cranfill, who has talked at many Shattered Dreams presentations, said she wasn’t seeking the audience’s sympathy.
“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I want you to understand why I’m doing this. I don’t want anyone to feel what I feel. I don’t want anyone to have to walk with a cane or a walker or a scooter. There are times now when I laugh or smile, but my heart will never be whole again like it was when my son was still alive.”
She concluded her presentation with a plea to the students.
“If someone gave you a bullet and a gun, would you play Russian Roulette?” she asked. “Of course, you wouldn’t. But when you you’ve been drinking and you put your key into the ignition of the car, you’re doing the same thing — you’re playing Russian Roulette. Please don’t drink and drive. Don’t ride with someone who’s been drinking. Don’t be another statistic.”