SDSU Campus Mourns Students Killed in Crash of Crew Van

Flags flew at half-staff and students wore black armbands Tuesday at San Diego State University in remembrance of three members of the university’s crew club who were killed in a van accident Sunday night while returning from a regatta near Sacramento.

“It’s like there’s a gray pall over the university,” said Bill Earley, president of the Associated Students. “Everybody seems to be depressed. I don’t know if a lot of these students knew the people, but they’re still very empathetic. I think it says something for the kind of people who go to school here.”

The three students--Mark Andrew Skinner, 19; Derek Christopher Guelker, 18, and John Marshall O’Hara, 20--were among 13 San Diego college athletes in the van. The vehicle was traveling south on a remote section of Interstate 5 in Merced County when it had a blow-out in its left rear tire, hurtled off the roadway at 85 m.p.h., rolled several times and caught fire, said Doyne Gates of the California Highway Patrol.

Before the Associated Students council holds its final meeting of the semester this afternoon, a minister from the Cooperative Campus Ministry will offer a prayer and a minute of silence in memory of the students, Earley said.

Crew club members held a brief memorial ceremony Tuesday morning, said Mike McDaniel, coach of the freshman and novice teams. Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity is also planning a memorial for O’Hara, a fraternity member. The university has established a trust fund through its scholarship office, to which donations on behalf of the three students may be made.

“It’s kind of hard to say this is what they would have wanted since they’re not here,” McDaniel said. “You just try to think of the nicest thing you could possibly do for them.”

While students are commemorating the deaths, Highway Patrol investigators and the leasing agency that owns the van are trying to determine if the accident could have been prevented. Because rowing is an unfunded, club sport at SDSU, crew members must provide their own transportation to and from meets. At issue is to what extent those who leased the van may have violated state laws and their rental agreement. The Highway Patrol is looking into the roles that the van’s high speed and the presence of open beer containers in the vehicle may have played in the accident. The van’s driver, crew member Joseph Farrage, 19, took a blood-alcohol test after the accident. The results of that test and the investigation will not be made public for several days, a CHP spokeswoman said Tuesday.

However, an official with Southwestern Leasing and Rental, whose agency in Mission Valley owns the van, said the crew club apparently violated its leasing agreement by allowing a 19-year-old to drive the vehicle and by breaking state speed limit and alcohol laws.

“On our contract, it says (the lessees) have to be over 25 to drive the rental car,” Gary Boze, claims administrator for Southwestern Rental and Leasing, said by phone from the firm’s Los Angeles headquarters. “They also agreed that they would operate the vehicle in accordance with state laws. We all know that open alcoholic beverages are not permitted in a vehicle while it’s being operated.”

Violation of the rental contract could make the person who leased the van--or his insurance company--at least partly liable for damage to the vehicle and any personal injury or wrongful death suits stemming from the accident, Boze said.

Boze said he did not know who leased the van and that the contract had been forwarded from the firm’s San Diego office to the agency’s attorney pending the outcome of the CHP investigation.

McDaniel said he did not rent the van for the students and did not know who did.

“A lot of times what happens is that everyone in the same (crew) boat will get a van together,” McDaniel said. “The three people who passed away I coached for most of the season. But, since for the last two weeks they’d worked out with the varsity team, the varsity worked it out among themselves how everybody was going to get up there.”

Varsity coach Chuck Datte could not be reached Tuesday. However, McDaniel said it would not be unheard-of for coaches to rent vans for crew members.

The three students “were such great guys, if they’d needed someone to rent a van for them, I would have done it,” McDaniel said.

University officials have turned the club’s copy of the van rental agreement over to the university’s business affairs office, said Sue Raney, SDSU communications manager.

“They’re going to be looking at insurance policies and the rental agreement,” Raney said.

Of the 10 people injured, five were still being treated at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto late Tuesday. Mark Starkey, 22, was listed in serious condition; the conditions of Brian Eliel, 21; Jeff Moorehouse, 19; Dan Wright, 19, and University of San Diego student Elizabeth Ciarrochi, 20, had all been upgraded to good, a hospital spokeswoman said.