The Day After, Deaths Sink In : Temecula Students and Parents Express Shock, Bitterness and Love

They began gathering at first light Wednesday, bringing more fresh flowers and tenderly rekindling the candles that had blown out during the awful night before.

By 7:30 this metal-gray morning, hundreds of students, tears cascading down their cheeks, huddled outside Temecula Valley High School, where four classmates and one parent had died 24 hours earlier in a gruesome crash during a high-speed chase involving the U.S. Border Patrol.

Contrasting with the students’ poignant outpouring of love and remembrance were their equally strong feelings of shock and bitterness. The friends they had teased and laughed with only days ago were dead, all for nothing, the students said. For most, it was their first cruel lesson that even young lives are like those candle flames that so quickly turned into wisps of smoke.

“It’s not right, it just isn’t right,” said Chris Hardwick, 16, shaking his head in despair and protest. “It never should have happened. I don’t know who to blame.”

Others knew exactly whom they chose to blame: the Border Patrol, which was pursuing a fleeing vehicle laden with suspected illegal immigrants. The pursued vehicle smashed into a car and two pedestrians, killing five people. All 12 occupants of the vehicle were injured.

“Stupid. If they would have kept their damn business out of here, maybe nothing would have happened,” said Sebastian Cortez, 16, as tears rolled down his face.

Another student, Gina Rocco, 17, added softly, “There’s going to be anger for a long time, I think.”

Anger wasn’t confined to the students. Some parents, like Suzanne Patafio, also came to the campus to grieve. Patafio expressed empty relief that her 16-year-old daughter wasn’t among the dead.

“I’m thankful she wasn’t one of them, but that doesn’t make it any easier. They’re never going to get their friends back,” Patafio said. “This whole thing was a senseless waste, (just to capture) a few illegals. There’s a lot of outraged parents, I’ll tell you that right now.”

The students should have been in class by 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, but teachers and school officials were glad the teen-agers were sharing their sadness and working through their torn emotions.

“I think everybody’s in a state of shock,” said Jim Smolenski, a resource teacher for three years at the school. “This is by far the worst thing that’s ever happened in this community.”

The mood had been somehow different Tuesday, when rumor and fear had rippled among the students. By late that day, the agony of not knowing was over: Dead were local banker John Davis, killed while driving his son, Todd, 17, and Todd’s 14-year-old friend, Monisa Emilio, to class. Students Gloria Murillo, 17, and her brother, Jose, 16, were killed on the sidewalk as they walked to school.

That night, students began a heartbreaking pilgrimage back to the campus, placing flowers, candles and wooden crosses and signs along the grassy embankment separating the campus from the sidewalk.

By Wednesday, the pain had settled in deeply. Students passed around newspaper stories and pictures. Death was coldly confirmed.

“I didn’t find out till morning, when I picked up the newspaper,” said Marc Paino, 18. Then he learned that Todd Davis, an acquaintance, was dead.

“My girlfriend and I have been here since 5:50, relighting all the candles that got burnt out last night,” Paino said. He remembered that Todd smoked, so he fished out his own last cigarette and laid it by a memorial for his classmate.

It was so ironic and unfair. Friends just shouldn’t be alive one day and forever gone the next.

“I just saw Todd the day before. . . . He was smoking in front of school,” said 17-year-old Gina Colome. “I said, ‘Good job, Todd, smoking in front of school.’ He said, ‘Hey, I’m smoking at the side of school.’ I said, ‘I’ll see you later.’ ”

She never did.

Somehow, a search for meaning has begun.

Although she graduated last year, Casey Austin came back to campus at daybreak. She stood sobbing on the corner. She had survived a terrible accident herself, and she wanted to tell students how important it is to revere life and love.

“People say they want to commit suicide and stuff, and they don’t know how much people care about them,” Austin said. “I used to be the kind of person who thought nobody cared.”

School district officials, teachers and parents scrambled to help the students. Counselors, nurses and psychologists ministered.

“Everybody’s going through a grieving process,” district Supt. Patricia Novotney. “They’re acting very naturally. There’s a loss.”

Some worried teachers checked on their pupils overnight Tuesday.

Fifteen-year-old Carrie Walley, who knew Gloria, Jose and Monisa, said, “My teacher called me at home and said, ‘Carrie, are you going to be OK?’ ”

Many students said their parents did their best to communicate and share feelings.

Sebastian Cortez said he’s trying to take his parents’ words to heart.

“They said to keep the memory alive in our minds,” he said. “That’s the most important thing.”