May 10, 2008 10:09 pm
—
By Melissa Dunson
and Derek Spellman
news@joplinglobe.com
Kerry Freeman isn’t one to throw stones.
She’s just a mother, hurting and full of hindsight, looking for answers to the growing list of dead local teenagers, a list that includes her 18-year-old daughter, Christina.
She’s tired of sappy memorials, excuses, condolences and the heads of older folks shaking in bewilderment, talking about “kids these days.”
“Let’s be real about it,” Freeman said. “This is about respect and consequences.”
Christina was killed after climbing into the car with a 17-year-old who crashed in 2006 at the Interstate 44 interchange with Range Line Road. Christina was ejected.
The driver, Cory J. Simmons, took a breath test that indicated he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.094 percent, according to court records.
In court, Simmons admitted consuming seven to eight drinks of vodka and orange juice the night in question. He also acknowledged having smoked marijuana.
Freeman is angry, and ready to take a real look at the issue. She has moved past reacting, and can say her daughter — whose post-mortem toxicology report indicated she had been drinking too — is not only a victim, but evidence that good kids make bad decisions and sometimes do not live to regret them.
Call to action
A national “Call to Action” issued last year by the U.S. Surgeon General termed underage drinking “a major societal problem” that requires all segments of a community to solve.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 7,460 youths between the ages of 15 and 20 were killed in accidents in 2005. More than 28 percent of those drivers were drinking.
That same Surgeon General’s report, as well as local law enforcement and victims’ families, notes the culture remains ambivalent about what some still consider a rite of passage and a $116 billion industry that is ubiquitous in American life. The same studies say underage drinkers get alcohol from older family members, friends and acquaintances.
Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland said his department gets mixed signals from the public about enforcement. Some parents call to thank officers but others call up to complain when their children are cited for being in possession of alcohol.
And while this “rite of passage” goes on, so does the list.
n Cherish Vaughn, 16, Joplin, got in a car with Trevor Nease, 17, about midnight July 25, 2007, after he had been drinking, according to Newton County Court Records. Nease tried to pass another vehicle on the shoulder while speeding down Missouri Highway 43 in Newton County, lost control and rolled the vehicle. Vaughn did not survive.
n Justin Baker, 19, Stella, got behind the wheel after drinking Dec. 29, 2006, and wrapped his car around a utility pole in McDonald County, according to the patrol. Baker did not survive.
n Caleb Forcum of Goodman and Leslie Parsons of Anderson, both 19, went for a drive after drinking during the early morning hours of Aug. 5, 2006, the patrol said. Everyone in the car was ejected. Neither Forcum nor Parsons survived.
‘If ...’
“It did surprise me,” Freeman said of finding out that Christina had been drinking the night she died. “I would always tell my kids no drugs and no drinking, but if they did drink, they shouldn’t drive. Maybe ‘If you’re going to drink ...’ should never have come out of my mouth.”
In hindsight, Freeman said she realizes that kind of language gave tacit approval, and reinforced the belief that underage drinking and other risky activities are part of growing up.
“It’s not OK to tell your kids that it’s OK to drink as long as they don’t drive,” she said.
Karen Cahalan was surprised to learn her late daughter had been drinking, too.
That daughter, Kassie Schenck, had always been “so responsible it was almost pathetic,” Cahalan said. Schenck also had helped raise her two siblings.
Schenck, 16, was killed in a car crash early Dec. 21, 2006, after drinking vodka allegedly supplied by a man who was then a Neosho police officer.
The 16-year-old was home-schooled and usually waiting for Cahalan when she returned from night shifts at McDonald County Nursing homes. Cahalan said she had never smelled alcohol on Schenck before and never had any reason to think that she was experimenting with alcohol or drugs.
“She was so responsible,” Cahalan said. “I never had a problem with Kassie. She had a lot of respect for her family.
“I beat myself up all the time [now],” Cahalan added.
Richard Bonnie, a professor at the University of Virginia and the chairman of a committee charged with curbing underage drinking, testified before Congress that experiences such as Cahalan’s and Freeman’s are not uncommon.
“Thirty percent of parents whose kids reported drinking heavily within the last thirty days think their kids do not drink at all,” Bonnie noted in his testimony.
The Surgeon General’s “Call to Action” made a similar point.
“Too often, parents are inclined to believe, ‘Not my child.’ Yet, by age 15, approximately one-half of America’s boys and girls have had a whole drink of alcohol, not just a few sips, and the highest prevalence of alcohol dependence in any age group is among people ages 18 to 20.”
‘My little girl’
The list of teen fatalities is not limited to those who drink and drive.
The front of Pat Murphy’s garage offers a sweeping view of the Monett High School football field across the street. This is the community that beckoned Murphy’s father, a physician looking to move his family from Kansas City to a more tranquil setting amid the tumult of the 1960s.
This is the community where the oldest of Pat Murphy’s seven children, 18-year-old Jessica Murphy, died last year. A 23-year-old Monett man is charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter after allegedly feeding fatal amounts of alcohol to Murphy at a party in March 2007.
For the Murphy family, it’s a different world now — compared to 30 years ago.
Murphy said in an era of cell phones and the Internet it seems harder to raise and protect children than ever before.
“You have so much going against you,” Murphy said.
Jessica was outgoing and vibrant. She planned to go to college and study to be a social worker, her father said before he began to break down.
“My little girl just loved people,” he said. “She always talked about giving the ‘bad ones’ advice.”
More than a year later, the Murphy family still doesn’t entirely know what happened the night of their daughter’s death. Of the nearly two dozen young people who went to the party in Monett, whose total population is just under 7,400, only a few have come forward to give an account of that evening.
Murphy said he is not sure how much other parents know, and that a lot of the youths who did attend the party were “good kids,” such as Jessica.
“She was trying to be her own woman,” he said. “I just saw her get pulled away.”
Different now?
There is debate now about whether underage drinking is getting better or worse.
Some studies and surveys indicate it is less common, and there are some encouraging signs, said Vivian Faden, of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
The number of high school seniors reporting having at least one alcoholic drink in the last 30 days went from 68 percent in 1975 to 45 percent in 2006, according to the annual “Monitoring the Future” survey funded by the National Institute on Drug Use.
The number of high school seniors reporting five or more drinks in a row in the two weeks prior to being surveyed also dropped, from 37 percent in 1975 to 25 percent in 2006, according to that survey.
However, in 2007, 68 percent of 12th graders surveyed said they “disapproved” of having five or more drinks once or twice each weekend, while more than 73 percent said they disapproved of having one to two drinks every day. Those figures compare to 70.7 percent and 75.9 percent disapproval ratings, respectively, in 1992. Again, that’s according to the National Institute on Drug Use.
And according to a 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control, 28.5 percent of all students surveyed nationwide reported riding one or more times in a car with someone who was drinking.
After 30 years as a police officer, Sgt. Van Bennett with the Carthage Police Department gets weary sometimes. He scratches his head and wonders if he has done everything he can to prevent these kinds of accidents. Bennett is the school resource officer for the city of Carthage, a city that’s had a difficult couple of years when it comes to high school students dying.
Bennett knew, among others, Hannah Smallwood, 15, who died in a 2006 crash where other teen passengers were drinking alcohol and the driver was allegedly using drugs, according to highway patrol records and court testimony.
“Even good kids make bad decisions,” Bennett said.
“It makes it tough — I’ve had times when I feel like beating my head against the wall — but you do what you can do and you can’t beat yourself up about it,” Bennett said. “You might ease up, but you don’t ever give up.”
Lessons learned
Calee Houlihan, a 16-year-old Carthage High School student, said although many teens act as if they want to buck parental authority, they really do want their parents to set ground rules. But Houlihan, who walked away from the 2006 wreck that killed Smallwood, said she also believes in teens taking personal responsibility for themselves.
She has taken responsibility for the underage drinking she did the night of the wreck, as well as getting into the car with someone who allegedly was driving high and racing at 110 miles per hour, according to court testimony. She looks at the wreck as possibly saving her by making her realize just how fragile life really is.
“I told my dad the night of the wreck that I never wanted to do anything ever again,” Houlihan said. “And I think it has helped the people around me too. I don’t put up with my friends doing stupid stuff now.”
Houlihan’s change of heart is a stark contrast to that of Jarub Baird, the 18-year-old driver in the crash that killed Smallwood.
The day after Baird was bound over to stand trial on felony charges related to the accident, he was arrested at a party and charged with being a minor in possession of alcohol. He also was arrested on a separate felony drug charge after the crash.
“I think there are so many different parts to why teenagers do this stuff — some people do it because their parents do it, some because of their friends and some because they think it’s fun or cool,” Houlihan said. “I think we will probably always have this problem to some degree, but I think it could be so much better.”
Freeman insists the responsibility for children repeatedly making bad decisions starts with parents.
“The most important thing parents can do is just to be a parent,” Freeman said. “Even my mom used to say, ‘Do what I say, not what I do.’ I preach to my kids all the time, but it’s time to start practicing what we preach ...
“I don’t care if my kids don’t like me right now — I’m the big ‘B’ around our house — but when they’re 25, they’ll look back and say that I really loved them — and kept them alive,” Freeman said.
Number one cause
Speeding was the number one cause of traffic fatalities in the state of Missouri in 2006 with 457 deaths, followed by driving while intoxicated with 273 deaths. More than 210 Missouri youths between the ages of 11 and 20 died in car wrecks in 2006. Drivers between the ages of 16 and 20 accounted for 218 fatal accidents in Missouri in 2006.
Source: Missouri State Highway Patrol
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Photos
Globe/Roger Nomer
Kerry Freeman lost her 18-year-old daughter, Christina, in a 2006 car accident. Today, Freeman works with MADD and other organizations to raise awareness about underage drinking.