Teen tragedy

TRIANGLE LAKE — It happens far too often — somewhere. There’s a crash, a teenager at the wheel. Someone’s been killed.

It happened here Tuesday. And a school of just 122 in 12 grades plus kindergarten is in mourning after losing one of its most popular students, a cheerleader, a volleyball player, a member of the choir and someone who had a “wicked” sense of humor but was always kind to the younger kids.

Shaleen Monticue, 18, was killed when she was thrown from the passenger seat of a white 1992 Jeep Cherokee driven by a former boyfriend who was hoping to win back her love, according to the boy’s father.

“He loved Shaleen,” Steve Williams said of his son, 17-year-old junior Ethan Purkey. They had been boyfriend and girlfriend off and on, a typical teenage thing, Williams said.

“It’s a horrible thing,” he said of the accident.

Williams’ son, who sustained minor injuries, including a damaged left heel that has him wearing a brace and using crutches, spent Tuesday night at Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend. “Physically, he’s doing OK,” Williams said. “Mentally, he’s really torn up right now.”

“He’s struggling really hard,” Lisanne Dickenson, whose daughter attends Triangle Lake, said of Ethan Purkey. He’s bruised and scratched up, she said. “Mostly it’s a broken heart. His physical wounds will heal, but this is never going to go away.”

Dickenson and her daughter, Triangle Lake freshman Savannah Dickenson, climbed down the steep, tree-covered hill off Bureau of Land Management Road 16-7-12.1 Thursday, to retrieve some personal items from the crash scene for Ethan Purkey. The vehicle was hauled out Wednesday.

Savannah was in tears by the time she climbed the 300 feet back to the logging road off Highway 36.

“There’s people blaming him,” Savannah said of her friend, Purkey. “And there’s people praying for him. We all know this is hard for him.”

Of the more than 16,000 teenagers who die in the United States each year, most — almost 50 percent — are killed in automobile crashes, according to a report released last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ National Center for Health Statistics.

Kids call it “mudding”

Around Triangle Lake, the kids call it “mudding,” said Triangle Lake Schools superintendent and principal LeAnne Raves. Since the crash that has devastated her school, she has discovered that kids usually don’t wear seat belts when they go four-wheeling on the area’s logging roads. They might be wearing them when they get there, but they take them off for the thrill of the ride.

None of the three teens riding in the vehicle owned by Ethan Purkey’s mother, Terri Purkey, was wearing a seat belt, according to the Lane County Sheriff’s Office, which is still investigating the crash.

“We were just driving a log road, and we didn’t think we needed it,” said Ryan Schaenzer, 15, who was riding in the back seat of the vehicle Tuesday.

It was Schaenzer who crawled to the top of the hill, hiked down the logging road, then flagged down a motorist to hitch a ride about two miles west to the Low Pass Market, where store manager Sam Singh called 911 about 4:15 p.m. Tuesday.

“The kid’s a hero — it’s amazing what he did,” said Lisanne Dickenson, who said she lost a boyfriend to a fatal car crash when both were Springfield teenagers in the early 1980s.

Sitting at the school Thursday afternoon, his left eye swollen and black with three stitches below it and two above it, Schaenzer recalled what happened. He, Purkey and Monticue left school in the Jeep Cherokee about 3:20 p.m. Tuesday to go “off-roading.” They drove to the top of the logging road, and then were headed back down when they slipped off the road after coming around a turn.

“We were going slow,” Schaenzer said. “We hadn’t done anything illegal, no drugs or anything like that. Nobody had their seat belts on or anything, but I tried to get mine on.”

Investigators said Tuesday that they don’t think alcohol played a part in the crash.

Schaenzer, who was sitting behind the driver’s seat, said he put his hands to the vehicle’s ceiling as it began to roll to steady himself. He thinks they may have rolled as many as 15 times.

“We rolled mainly to the side, but we ended up going end-over-end at one point,” he said.

They finally landed upright, Schaenzer said. But Monticue, whose window was rolled down, was no longer in the vehicle and Purkey had been thrown into the back seat. Schaenzer reached forward and grabbed the steering wheel as the Jeep Cherokee continued to meander to a stop. Then he turned the engine off and got out. He made his way about halfway back up the hill to where Monticue lay. He checked her pulse, but she did not have one.

“I let Purkey know that she didn’t make it and I was going to go get help,” Schaenzer said.

One of his shoes had come off, so he took the other one off and carried it in his hand as he made his way back down the logging road. When he returned with the paramedics who picked him up at the Low Pass Market, Purkey had climbed to where Monticue’s body was, and covered her with his coat, said Schaenzer, who spoke with a grief counselor made available to students at school Thursday.

Memorial held at school

Flowers and balloons marked the spot Thursday where tire tracks still could be seen on the logging road. Savannah Dickenson couldn’t stop the tears as she sat with her mother and talked about Monticue, who she had known for about three or four years.

“She’s smart,” she said, keeping her friend — who was one of only nine members of the junior class and whom everyone called “Shay” — in the present tense. “She’s crazy. She’s a lot of fun to be around. She’s always there for everybody.”

Raves, the principal, said Monticue, who lived in the area with her grandmother and legal guardian, LaVerne Monticue, was “very well-liked. She had a wicked sense of humor, but she was never mean-spirited,” Raves said. “Our younger students remember her because she was always nice to them or rode the bus with them or baby-sitted them.”

Raves is finishing her second year at the school after eight years at Lebanon High School, where tragedies like Tuesday’s are more common.

“But it’s always difficult,” Raves said. “The kids are doing pretty well. They’ve had good support and have monitored each other closely. We are proud of them for that. Today, it probably hit a little harder,” she said, referring to a memorial service students and staff held outside in the 70-degree sunshine Thursday. They read poems they had written about Monticue and released two doves in her memory.

Monticue’s school locker, No. 115, was covered Thursday with photographs of her and notes that stretched seven lockers wide.

“We all love Shay and miss her truly,” one note read. “We all wish that all this did not happen but I guess in a way it was time to let her go.”