IMAGE GALLERY: Driving Home the Point: Don't Drink and Drive

She lay as though she had been thrown through the windshield onto the hood of a white car, now stained with her “blood.” For about 45 minutes, her right arm hung limply over the car’s passenger-side front wheel, out from under the white sheet that covered the rest of her body.

Firefighters and ambulance personnel pulled “injured” students out of white and maroon cars involved in a staged drunk-driving accident outside the high school Thursday morning.

Only after all the students who survived the mock accident were “treated” and some “transported” away from the scene and the driver of one car handcuffed and taken away in a police cruiser for allegedly driving drunk did the responders focus on the woman on the hood of the white car.

“Do they really leave you (like that if you’re dead)?" one of the juniors and seniors brought out to witness the faux accident asked.

Funeral home personnel moved the “dead” student into a hearse and drove away.

The crowd fell silent.

Students then filed into the auditorium for a short film about what happens to patients brought into an emergency room after a car accident involving alcohol or other drugs, and a short power point presentation about students who died in drinking and driving accidents

Student Meaghan Finn read the poem, “Death of an Innocent.” It tells the story of a girl who dies after the car she is riding in is hit by a drunk driver.

“I didn’t drink and drive,” the poem concludes. “So why am I the one to die?”

“This is just a fake accident,” student Jake Sakis, one of the students who participated in the crash scenario, told the audience of his peers.

“Please grasp how severe this is," he added. “You can still have fun. Be safe first.”

What you don’t see, school resource officer Det. Edward Fumicello told the audience, are court proceedings, jail and monetary costs. The price tag could run close to $1 million, he said. Fumicello coordinated the mock accident, the second at the high school. The first was held two years ago.

“Nothing I tell you can get you to not drink,” Fumicello told the students.

“You should make the right decision,” he said, adding, don’t drink and drive and don’t get into a car with a driver who has been drinking.

“The worst test to fail,” according to the power point presentation by school resource officer mentors, is a sobriety test. The mentors also acted in the mock crash.

Senior Gabby Parker and junior Kylee McGann both said the program got them thinking about drinking and driving.

Students who participated as actors in the mock car crash gauged its impact by the silences that occurred during the “rescue,” especially when the hearse arrived, Leila Souhail, the senior who portrayed the girl who died in the crash, told Woburn Patch after the program

Senior Hannah Magee agreed. At first, kids weren’t taking the scenario seriously, she said. Then, she said, they got quiet—silent.

“It’s important for kids to see what it’s really like to be in a (car) accident and how it affects everybody,” Hannah said.

Bradford Carten, a senior who played the drunk driver who caused the accident that “killed” Leila, said he agreed to play that role because he thought he could do it well and have an impact on viewers.

The program did have an effect on his peers, he said, and the effect will last "for a few days.” The junior prom is tonight, one day after the mock accident. The senior prom is May 26.

“I think (the simulated crash) will make people think twice,” Bradford said.

For video of the event, click here.