Candlelight vigil remembers three lives lost

Geeky Swedes Ballard

More than a hundred people gathered at the scene of Sunday’s tragic accident tonight to remember Kellen Jones, Spenser Millard and Mike Turner.

Friends and family held candles, laughed and cried, hugged each other, and wrote messages on the Taco Time pole that was hit by a Pontiac Firebird carrying the three Ballard High School graduates. A teenage exchange student named Ashlynn was critically injured in the crash.

“You boys will be missed greatly,” reads one message on the pole. “We love you. Rest in Paradise. Class of ’08.” Another message reads, “I miss you so much. You’ll aways be my teddy bears.”

You can leave a message of remembrance in an online memorial here.

Geeky Swedes

The founders of My Ballard

59 thoughts to “Candlelight vigil remembers three lives lost”

  1. None of the local news sites have identified the girl by name. Not the PI, nor the Times. Obviously, this is being done out of respect for her family. Why has MyBallard taken it upon themselves to divulge the girl's name, and where did they get the information in the first place?

    Irresponsible.

  3. My condolences to all of the families involved. It's sad to know that we don't learn from our history. Too many Ballard families have felt this pain and loss. Young adults understand that you are not bulletproof and you can over reach you abilities and experience. These vehicle deaths and critical injuries haven't changed since the 60's. Hot cars, alcohol and young deaths should not be the Ballard Legacy.

    Ballard is in my soul

  4. Who cares if we know her first name? I'm using her as an example to my kids of irresponsible behavior and the consequences. I know someone at Harborview who says she'll have permanent and irreversible brain damage as a result of her irrresponsible behavior. Hopefully she's learned a lesson.

  5. “nonplussed”:

    The young woman's first name was already on the news on TV the other day. It is also on the komonews web site. I hope she recovers soon.

  6. How is announcing her first name disrespectful to the family?

    It's weird that the school or the police won't even release what country she is from. Although they are probably scrambling to protect themselves, as it appears they allowed her to come to Seattle. But who knows, I'm sure there will be plenty of finger-pointing before this is all over.

  7. Geeky Swedes:
    I really wish you wouldn't refer to this as a “tragic accident”. Tragic? Absolutely. Accident? Absolutely not. This person was in control of what happened. They made the conscious decision to act in a manner that was criminal and showed complete disregard for their safety and the safety of everyone around them. That's not an accident. When you call it an accident you basically make it sound like it was something unfortunate which befell them and which they had no control over. Clearly that's not the case. So long as media outlets such as yourself continue to refer to these crashes as “accidents” nobody will take them seriously and hold dangerous drivers accountable.

  9. Those with the flaming rhetoric about responsibility and choices might do well to remember the idiotic decisions they made as kids, too. We are all lucky to be alive.

    Wishing peace to all the families and friends involved.

  10. This was no accident. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

    I wonder how a 10th grader ended up in a car with a bunch of guys in their 20's at 4:00 AM in the morning. Even more evidence of bad judgment all around. Including the school that was charged with the care of this 10th grader. Sending a 10th grader on a weekend outing hundreds of miles from where she's living in the care of another teenager? Incredible.

    If the school that was charged with her care avoids a lawsuit out of this it is only because they negotiate a massive out of court settlement.

  11. Even as an adult, this has changed me.

    Yesterday I was driving down 15th and I saw a car with the driver cradling a can of Budweiser between his knees when we stopped for a red light. I got on my phone to 911, reported the details – car, direction of travel, etc. In less than a minute this guy was pulled over by SPD and doing the perp-walk. I watched from a block away as they put the cuffs on and put him in the back of the car and (I assume) called for his car to be towed away.

  13. agreed, but then what's the shorthand for it in the headline w/o editorializing? “One car collision” sounds strange. “Car crash”? Car wreck?

  14. Car crash would be a more correct term. Calling it an “accident” **IS** editorializing because it implies nobody was at fault and that this crash was somehow an unavoidable event of chance. The Oxford English Dictionary (generally considered the definitive source) defines an accident as: “1 an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally. 2 an incident that happens by chance or without apparent cause. 3 chance.”

    This crash was hardly unexpected given the speed and intentionally illegal manner in which the person was driving (to say nothing of the allegation of drunkenness). It's also quite clear that there was an apparent cause (speeding and reckless driving).

    An accident is when a tree suddenly falls in front of a car, brakes fail without warning, a child darts out from behind a parked car, etc. Those are instances where a crash is likely to occur and there's nothing a driver can do to prevent it. Most car crashes are not accidents. The fact that police issue citations to those found to be at fault proves this.

    The problem is the media and even the police insist on calling these crashes “accidents” and this only reinforces the notion that motorists shouldn't be held accountable for their poor driving decisions and that our current system of driver testing/licensing is acceptable. When you compare Europe and American traffic fatalities it's quite clear that driver training/licensing/enforcement in this country is a joke. It would be a funny joke were it not for the fact that it kills ~40,000 people a year and is the leading cause of death among children.

  23. People need to remember that the families of these three boys read these sites. Have respect.They are still in mourning..The boys did a very ignorant thing..but no one can take it back. Keep your opinions to yourself, and your children closer.

  24. This is NOT some kind of feel good forum on behalf of the parents of the idiots that died. This is a COMMUNITY forum and people are free to express their opinions.

  26. Thank you Courtney, I agree that it's not useful to say things that are just hurtful and don't add anything constructive to the discussion.

    Let the person who never did a stupid, dangerous thing in their life throw the first stone.

  27. wow, i don't have a ton of sympathy here, but you are a ghoul.

    you'd like to have pictures of her before she was “carted off”? you have kids? you are sick.

  28. Stupid? Yes. Kid? NO! He was 20 years old. Don't know why people keep calling him a kid. Again, just another way we take the blame away from the responsible party. The “he was just a kid” argument is a load of crap. Maybe if he was 16 years old that *might* fly but at 20 you're a fully grown adult.

  29. As someone who walks home from downtown Ballard along Market street between 4-5am a few nights a week, I feel very fortunate not to have been walking by Taco Time when the crash happened. I think, if nothing else, everyone is lucky that no pedestrians were out at that hour…

    Does anyone know how fast they were going? By the look of the car, they were definitely going a lot faster than the speed limit. Isn't it 35 or 40 along that stretch?

  30. I think that to many people who are posting about this are forgetting these are kids. Other peoples kids. The same thing could happen to anyone else. Many of us may forget all stupid the things we did when we were that age. I know it could have happened to me many times. Some of these kids were also just passengers that got into the wrong car at the wrong time. So for all you people that are just talking negatively about these kids remember they have families that are hurting and it is a tragedy and was an accident because I'm sure nobody wanted this to happen. Its real easy to just type whatever you want but just put yourself in they're families shoes. Losing family hurts deeper than anything else.

  33. Here's what the school that the foreign 10th grader was attending says about the outside the classroom experiences:
    •Incorporating experiential education into the curriculum to provide extraordinary context for students’ academic work
    •Creating a range of challenging experiences where the learner is a participant rather than a spectator in learning

    I'd love to be a fly on the wall where they try to explain to the parents how this relates to the kid ending up in a car full of drunken men at 4 in the morning hundreds of miles from the school.

  36. Yes they chose to drive, ride along, speed, drink….but that doesn't mean that this was on purpose. I'm sure they didn't mean to get into a horrible wreak and die and that makes it an accident.

  37. I completely agree. The nasty comments and hateful things that people have said about these young lives is just out of hand. Can't we just focus on what is important here? Making sure this doesn't happen again, education, stricter laws (the driver obviously should not have been getting behind the wheel after the first DUI) and community support. Yes they made some terrible decisions but that does not mean that they were terrible human beings.

  38. Not buying it. They purposefully drove in a dangerous and illegal manner. Saying they didn't intend to get into a wreck is sort of like the guy who shot and killed the clerk at the convenience store on 15th a few months back saying he didn't intend to shoot the clerk. Deliberate or not, when you freely chose to do something that is both criminal and dangerous it's not an accident and you should be held responsible.

    If this guy had hit and killed a pedestrian instead of wrapping his car around that pole I absolutely guarantee he never would have gone to prison for it. Doubt me? Look what happened to the rabbi in west Seattle who killed a pedestrian in a crosswalk. He never spent a day in jail and only received a two year deferred sentence which means the charge will come off his record. This despite the fact that he'd previously hit a cyclist while driving and had numerous other traffic citations. Fact is in Seattle if you kill someone with a car nothing happens.

  39. You don't have to buy it. But an accident means that it wasn't intended. They didn't intend to die. I fully agree that what they did was very dangerous, ridiculous and stupid but intent is 9/10th of the law.

  40. That is quite a respectful gathering of people under the Taco Time sign. Every time we drive by, we’ll be reminded of what happened and the lives lost. We hope all of you will be able to make it to the next BHS Class of 2008 reunion. Be smart and be safe.

  41. The real issue to come from this is not about releasing a victim's name (adult 0r juvenile), it is what can be done to try prevent more senseless injury and death. I know it hasn't changed in forty years, it's time we all took responsibilty for our driving and remember it is a privilege not a right. Drinking, phoning, texting and over driving conditions or abilities are killing us and our kids.

  47. “When you call it an accident you basically make it sound like it was something unfortunate which befell them and which they had no control over. “

    There is nothing in the definition of the word “accident” that means it has to be something that “befell them and which they had no control over”. Accidents always have causes, most are avoidable at some point, but they are notheless accidents.

    The use of the term is appropriate. Your understaning of the meaning of the word is suspect.

  48. “This crash was hardly unexpected given the speed and intentionally illegal manner in which the person was driving (to say nothing of the allegation of drunkenness).”

    This accident was unexpected. Given the speeding, drunkeness etc. we could say “An” accident was expected, but you can't say “this” accident was expected.

    This crash clearly falls under “1 an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally.” and fitt the definition of an accident.

  49. Thank you, justinmw. Your words capture exactly how I am feeling about what happened. I was once a wreckless teen, and I have been thankful everyday that I did not end up how these kids did. I drive by that site almost everyday and feel so sad for the passengers of that car, and yes, even the driver, and now even more so for their surviving family members. I hope the people who wrote hateful things in these comments have enough tact to never say the things they've written to the parents and siblings of the kids who died that night.

  50. While we're being mean, I can't figure out why everyone gets all righteous and bothered by drunk driving fatalities:
    “what a drunken idiot”
    But won't assign blame in a similar fashion to this case. This driver SOBERLY decided to endanger his friends! That's cold-blooded imo.

  51. So, Remember the news that the driver had been charged only a few weeks earlier with 5 counts of hit-and-run and DUI?
    The Seattle Times reported that by midday monday (the day after the accident), The city had dropped all charges against the young man.

    Now, I know this sounds nit-picky, but hear me out: This is highly unusual. The normal process of dismissing charges against a dead person involves the requisite red-tape (they gotta double-check to make sure, there really is no rush). It takes weeks, sometimes much longer. In this case, The prosecutor, for some unknown reason, hastily dropped charges “in the interest of justice”… whatever that means.

    Why? It could be because we have a new prosecutor, and a new mayor, and they can, of course, legally do this, but I'm thinking it's because this was so…. wait for it… squeeze out a tear…. tragic! Or they could have been a little shell-shocked from the recent police murder suspect release fiasco. It should also be noted that the original press release for the fatal wreck did not include the obvious background story (he's out on bail for chrissake).

  52. I'd venture to say a part of that answer is related to the reason that this incident has captured so many peoples attention- drunken car wrecks happen all the time, but they rarely generate more than a mention in the news. These kids were all members of a fairly tight-knit community, and it happened in their own quaint family neighborhood. So, a great deal more attention and concern from the community probably pushed it to the top of the stack. Just a speculation.

  53. To the “reckless teens” argument- true, but don't kid yourself. This guy had a serious record for someone his age. There's a big difference between being reckless and being a fatal hazard to those around you.

    It shouldn't take a crash to teach people a lesson about safe driving; every parent should make the deliberate decision to revoke their childrens' driving privileges after they get a DUI!

  54. “Let the person who never did a stupid, dangerous thing in their life throw the first stone.”

    Garbage.

    We all did stupid things in our youth, not all of us had the special stupidity it takes to get two DUIs and kill three of our friends in less than a month.

  56. Mike may have made mistakes in his life, but that doesn't mean he was a terrible person. I only met him a couple times and not under the best circumstances, but he was overall a pretty nice, friendly kid. Spenser was like a brother to me and I'm very close to his family, but I'm not blaming anyone in this accident. It was stupid of them to get in the car, but what's done is done. All we can do now is hope they are in a better place.

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