In Instant, School Day Turns Into a Nightmare : Tragedy: Death of four teen-agers and a parent hit by a fleeing vehicle leaves students shocked, dazed.

The school’s football team was enmeshed in early-morning practice, the 2,200 other students had poured onto campus beneath a banner proclaiming “Gateway to Your Future,” and preparations were under way for the night’s scholarship awards presentation when the crashing sound turned heads and sent students scrambling to windows and along fences.

And, just like that, talk of finals, of graduation, of summer, turned to pained discussions of death.

Death, right there in front of them. Schoolmates. Friends. Right there.

For the next two hours, students were kept in their first-period classes, teaching all but halted and students began their own head count: who was in school--and whose bodies were strewn across the grass and in the wreckage of the car?

Despite school officials’ attempt to keep a lid on rumors, the teen-age grapevine was in high gear.

That was Todd Davis’ dad’s car! We just went camping with him a couple of weeks ago! He loved to party, man. He was a skater. Who couldn’t like him?

Was Monisa Emilio in the car, too? She loved little kids. Her older brother, Tony, was called out of class in first period, came back with his head down, grabbed his backpack and left in a hurry. Oh no, it was Monisa!

Who were the two students walking across the street? Jose and Gloria Murillo? Their mom was out there, covering the accident for her newspaper, and she didn’t even know it was her kids!

Within an hour of the accident--which happened just minutes after school started--a hastily patched-together flyer was dispatched to teachers, providing skimpy news for them to pass along to their students.

Radios were pulled out of backpacks as helicopters whirred above the campus.

And, by noontime, as the campus was all but enveloped in the tragedy outside its doors, students reacted with tears, hugs and disgust.

“What a waste,” said senior Mike Madieros, who knew Todd Davis. “You go to school for 12 years, and you’re just about ready to start a life for yourself--graduation is in two weeks--and this happens.”

Kara McDaniel, a 17-year-old junior, said that anger was clearly the prevailing mood. Everyone, she said, was looking for someone to blame.

“We’ve seen them (the Border Patrol) behave like that on the freeways, but never in a million years did we think that they’d drive like maniacs in front of our school and end up killing somebody who went to school here--innocent kids who had nothing to do with their little hunt for aliens,” McDaniel said.

The theme was repeated often.

“You don’t do that at 7 o’clock in the morning when kids are going to school,” said Marissa Shelby, a 16-year-old sophomore. “You just don’t do that, I don’t care how high your so-called purpose is.”

“It’s true though that illegals are everywhere, and the sense is that it’s kind of a lost cause for the cops,” said Andy Weaver, who wore a baseball cap turned backward on his head as rocked back and forth on his skateboard.

“So why go crazy in front of our school? What did that prove?” Weaver said. “They could go out to the wineries and pick up so many (undocumented workers), but they chase little ones, like around here.”

Indeed, students living in Temecula have grown up alongside agricultural workers tending to the region’s vineyards. Despite the area’s explosive growth over the past 10 years, the community has tried hard to hold to its rural roots--its Old Town antique stores and its vineyards and wineries that give this southern part of Riverside County distinction.

Most of the area’s residents have flocked here from Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties, hoping to snatch bigger or better homes at bargain prices, creating a new suburban tableau of families and bulging schools.

Nineteen-year-old Jeremy Bristol, who graduated last year, was close to Todd Davis and had gone camping with him and others in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park just two weeks ago.

“This sounds funny, but none of us considered Todd mortal,” Bristol said with a wry laugh. “Him dying shows us it could happen to any one of us at any time. He was a guy who really enjoyed his life.

“It was short, but he had fun while he was living it. . . . It’s so weird, because just a couple of weeks ago, we went on the camping trip. Had a real good time--and that’s never going to happen again. It’s just a real shock to find out that Todd Davis, of all people, is dead.”

Bristol said his lasting memory of Todd is one mentioned by several students.

“Todd was a partyer,” Bristol said, with a mixture of regret and respect.

As he brushed away a tear, he laughed.

During the morning, as investigators picked through the wreckage, students stole away to the far corner of the campus nearest the corner of Rancho Vista and Margarita and stared. Some cried; others shook their head. A few cursed. One girl looked at the sedan that had been torn in half, its front half tossed in one spot, its back half several yards away, and screamed.

Cassette tapes and a charred ashtray from the car lay a few feet away.

School officials reacted quickly to the deaths of four of their students, bringing in more than a dozen crisis counselors from other district schools as well as two outside agencies. They set up sessions in the school library and met with scores of students, said Jay Hoffman, assistant superintendent of the Temecula Valley Unified School District.

Among those counseled, he said, were two siblings of the victims and “many, many friends.”

Counseling will continue through the week, through school counselors, the Trauma Intervention Program counseling agency, and social workers with the city of Temecula, he said.

Hoffman predicted that the number of affected people would increase as the weight of the tragedy sank in and persons dwelled on it.

“There are people who have been too busy helping others,” Hoffman said. “They haven’t had a chance to deal with the horror of it all.”

As law-enforcement teams pored over the scene, students huddled in circles on campus, talking of nothing else. Dan Olson, a 17-year-old junior, said he knew victim Monisa Emilio, who spent much of her spare time baby-sitting.

“She just loved to take care of little kids,” Olson said. “And the younger the better. She loved kids, especially babies. She liked to tease too. We would tease her, and she would tease us. She was really nice, really sweet.”

Olson paused and looked at his friends, Gary Grabett, a 16-year-old junior, and Brock Tallent, a 17-year-old junior, who also knew Todd Davis and his girlfriend’s sister, Monisa Emilio.

“And now,” Olson said of Monisa, “this girl who loved to take care of kids just dies in a car that’s literally sawed in half. A lot of us here don’t understand.”

Times staff writer John H. Lee contributed to this report.