Home >  Local News

Sunday, May 25, 2003

By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The principal of Blairsville High School yesterday set about a painful chore: activating a telephone "chain" to notify faculty, contacting the school psychologist and making sure his 400 or so grieving students can get counseling.

The reason is all too familiar: On Friday night, 16-year-old Paige Benton became the school's fourth student to die in six months in a highway crash.

Her death on a rain-drenched road in Center Township compounded the grief already facing the mainly rural school in Indiana County, coming just days before its graduation. The impact, already being felt, will become more apparent Tuesday as students return to school from the Memorial Day weekend.

"This is just too much," the principal, Tim Haselhoff, said. "Any one of these is tragic. But we just seem to have been inundated."

The sobering aftermath of the Blairsville accidents is reminiscent of grief that has resided in another Western Pennsylvania high school, Slippery Rock, where seven of its students died in crashes during the 2001-2002 school year.

In Blairsville, word of yet another fatality produced calls for more driver instruction targeting teenagers and establishing a youth center to keep students of the town closer to home.

Benton, a sophomore and the youngest of three children who enjoyed art and poetry, was among three people in a pickup truck whose driver lost control of the wheel on Route 286. The vehicle rolled over on a front lawn, and the roof of the vehicle struck a house, state police at the Indiana barracks said.

An autopsy performed yesterday showed that Benton apparently died from neck and chest injuries, said Michael Baker, chief deputy Indiana County coroner.

The driver, Scott Anthony, 17, of Carrolltown, Cambria County, and passenger Amy Kelly, 16, of Blairsville, were taken to Conemaugh Hospital in Johnstown. They were in fair condition yesterday, a nursing supervisor said.

State police weren't sure what caused the driver to lose control. Investigators said none of the occupants wore seat belts.

Thunderstorms rumbled across Western Pennsylvania on Friday night, and Baker said the road was apparently wet, opening up the possibility of hydroplaning as a factor in the 11:15 p.m. crash.

Benton's death follows by seven weeks another wreck in Hempfield that killed three teenagers, including two other Blairsville students -- Jennifer Bost, 16, of Blairsville and her best friend Nicole McKendrick, 17, of Black Lick.

State police investigating that crash said Brett Al-Salih, 18, of Greensburg, who also died in the accident, was speeding when the vehicle did not make a curve on Route 30, striking a fence and a tree. None of the occupants in that crash worse seat belts either, state police said.

And Friday's wreck occurred six months after yet another Blairsville student, junior Andrea Resslar, 16, died on Nov. 23 of injuries from a crash that also occurred on State Route 286, said Jim Ferguson, director of Ferguson Funeral Home, involved in arrangements for both her and Benton.

Mary Whitfield, vice president of the Blairsville-Saltsburg School Board, said Friday night's crash may give extra momentum to a plan to build a youth center in Blairsville. She said a number of churches have been pursuing the idea and one, the Second Baptist Church of Blairsville, already has offered a building.

"For a small community to have to experience that many deaths in one year is not just a tragedy, but it gives us a message," she said. "And I think the message is we need to provide more for our youths to do right in our own community so the don't have to travel away. Blairsville doesn't have much."

When told that occupants in the two latest crashes were not wearing seat belts, Whitfield said highway safety information targeting teenagers in the district might also be helpful . "I would like to see driver's training put back in the schools," she said.

Haselhoff said teachers will arrive earlier than usual Tuesday and staff will be present throughout the school to provide help as needed. The school will use counselors and response teams of employees specially trained for such tragedies.

Benton would have graduated with the class of 2005. She attended Indiana County Vo-Tech, where she studied digital media and worked on projects developing Web sites, and hoped to attend the Art Institute of Pittsburgh after graduation.

"She was an artist and a poet," her older sister Holly Benton said. "She wanted to combine her creativity and her interest in digital media into a career."

An active member of the student government and a tutor to other students, Paige Benton was recognized Thursday evening at a banquet as her school's "Outstanding Sophomore," Holly Benton said. Three weeks earlier, Paige was awarded a Rotary Youth Leadership Award.

A poem that Paige Benton wrote, "Life," will be read at her service.

"Don't think of what happened before, or what might happen tomorrow," she wrote, "Think only of today!"

Surviving are parents, Patrick Benton and Dawn Benton; two sisters, Jill Spiaggi of Clymer, Pa.; and Holly Benton of Blairsville.

Arrangements are being handled by the James F. Ferguson Funeral Home, 25 West Market St., Blairsville. Visitation will be tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m., and on Tuesday from 2 to 9 p.m. Funeral Mass will be Wednesday at 10 a.m. in Ss. Simon & Jude Church in Blairsville. Interment will be in Blairsville Cemetery.