Aurora – Two Smoky Hill High School seniors died Wednesday after a car wreck the day before on busy South Parker Road, creating an emotional scene as classmates tried to grapple with the loss of the two popular students.
Ian Wallace died on the operating table from massive chest injuries, while Joshua Bankett-Land died after being taken off life support; he had sustained major head trauma. Both 17-year-olds were in the back seat and were not wearing seat belts.
The two other students involved in the crash – driver Michael Stillwagon and Alton Coward – sustained minor injuries.
Coward, 17, was treated and released, and Stillwagon, 16, remained in fair condition Wednesday night. Both are juniors at Smoky Hill.
The group was coming back from a day at a mall about 3 p.m. on South Parker Road when their 2002 Kia veered across the median near East Temple Drive and headed into oncoming traffic. The car smashed into two other vehicles.
“They were messing around in the car, and all of a sudden the next thing they knew they lost control,” said Travis Rice, a friend of the victims.
Police say charges will be determined after an accident reconstructive analysis is completed.
“We were just having fun, having a good time,” Coward told KMGH- 7News. “We were just being boys, you know?”
Then catastrophe struck.
“I was on my phone, I was looking down. And we just started swerving, kept swerving more and more, and then we just hopped the median. And we saw two white cars coming and we all just blacked out after that,” Coward said.
“I jumped out of the car and looked in the back seat because the window was broken and Josh was laying there like lifeless, he was like asleep. I thought he was dead and I kept telling him to wake up. I kept begging him to wake up. I checked his neck to see if he still had a pulse,” Coward said. “And Ian, he was yelling, yelling for help. He was trapped in between the door and the seat.”
Wednesday night, a short distance from where their friends were killed, about 200 teens gathered at an impromptu vigil on the sodded lawn of some nearby town homes. Standing silently in concentric circles, the group held candles.
The group’s silence was broken only as Chelsae Dysart and two friends quietly sang “His Eyes on the Sparrow,” just loud enough to be heard amid the roar of cars on South Parker Road.
“It’s pretty impressive that the kids did this on their own to support each other,” said Estella Rummelein, a Smoky Hill parent. “This is a school full of love.”
Earlier Wednesday, another scene played out at Eastern Hills Community Church near the southeastern Aurora school and at Medical Center of Aurora’s south campus as Smoky Hill students converged on the hospital and church to pray, share memories and cry.
“There were a lot of emotions and a lot of hurting hearts … and tears,” said Eric Ochocki, youth worship leader at the church. “But we got to share stories and laugh about the love and liveliness of the kids.”
At the hospital, students were led in two at a time to say goodbye to Bankett- Land. Travis Rice, a junior, was one of those. “I just said ‘bye to him,” said Rice, who got to know Bankett-Land at a summer church camp. “We were best friends. You see him and you just feel so bad. He’s laying there so helpless. … It was like he wasn’t there.”
The second-oldest of six boys and two girls, Bankett-Land had promise in art and spent his free time drawing cartoon characters in a sketch pad. He was expected to graduate this spring. He frequented a church youth ministry and copied Scripture and placed it on his family’s kitchen table as a reminder to find their inner peace.
He planned to get an after-school job, go to college and live a “life that was better than the one I’ve had,” said his father, Del Bankett. “He was going places. He wasn’t going to struggle.”
But these past years have been difficult, the family said.
The teenager’s grandmother died two years ago, then his 2-year-old nephew died last year from a stroke. In July, the family said, his mother was arrested on a shoplifting charge.
Jefferson County jail officials released Velma Bankett on $100,000 bond Wednesday afternoon. Her husband met her outside the hospital with a dozen red roses and baby’s breath in a crystal vase. They held each other and cried.
“I don’t want to go up there,” the mother screamed. “I don’t want to go up there.”
Wallace, who was a defensive player on the school’s football team and a sprinter on the track team, wanted to be considered the school’s top booster, said athletic director Don Nelson.
“Everyone respected him; he was very well liked,” he said. “He was a great kid. They were (all) some of our best supporters. You would always see them in the crowd, whether it was soccer, volleyball, football. (Wallace) was an extremely friendly kid.”
Wallace’s parents declined to talk with reporters Wednesday, as did parents of Stillwagon.
“Ian was just a mellow kid,” said friend Ryan Dang. “… School won’t be the same coming up on Monday.”
By Wednesday morning, school principal Jeannine Brown and her staff had gathered to develop a crisis response, as they did two years ago when assistant football coach Mike Leighton was gunned down at a car wash on West Colfax Avenue.
“It’s like someone just punches you in the gut and you can’t get your breath,” said Brown, holding back tears. “You ask a lot of things: ‘Why? Why?”‘
Staff writers Joey Bunch and George Merritt contributed to this report.
Staff writer Jeremy Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
