Fake Crash Fails to Fool Students : Oxnard: County emergency workers and an ambulance company simulate a bloody accident at Rio Mesa High to deliver an anti-drunk-driving message.

You can fool all the people some of the time, or some of the people all the time. But not the students at Oxnard’s Rio Mesa High School. At least not on Monday.

A simulated auto accident, intended as a warning against drunk driving, was staged by a private ambulance company and nine Ventura County emergency-response workers on a road next to the school’s cafeteria just before the lunch break on Monday.

The goal was to convince the students that two Rio Mesa students had been killed and two others injured.

They were also supposed to end up believing that a fifth student pretending to be a drunk driver was being arrested in front of them.

Rio Mesa’s 2,000 students were not told about the planned simulation, and at first they were drawn toward the accident scene by the sirens of fire engines, ambulances and a sheriff’s deputy squad car that converged on the scene.

But the initial expressions of worry and confusion on some students’ faces quickly turned to smiles.

And, instead of mourning the classmates who were supposedly dead, the students taunted them.

“Hey, Sylvia,” one girl yelled to Sylvia Hernandez as she lay prone and expressionless on the asphalt. “I get your car!”

“Sylvia! I get your uniform,” another girl yelled as Hernandez, a varsity volleyball and softball player, continued to lie unmoving as if she didn’t hear her friends.

Some students said later that they had initially believed that the accident was real.

But Monica Zendejas, 16, said that once she got closer she could tell the dripping blood and bruises on the accident victims were just paint and makeup.

Ryan Jennings, 17, said he realized that the accident was fake because, “we didn’t hear any screeching brakes or anything.”

In addition, Ryan said, “people are screaming in a car accident. They’re not patting each other” to give comfort as the students playing accident victims had done.

County emergency workers and medical technicians from Gold Coast Ambulance Service set up the accident scene while students were in their morning classes.

A local service station donated and towed in a wrecked, brown Datsun whose previous owner had rammed the car into a pole.

The car’s nose was lodged against a telephone pole on an access road alongside the school to appear as if the damage had just been done.

Then the five participating students and two ambulance workers pretending to be accident victims took their positions.

Hernandez, 17, who is senior class president, and Demetrius Henderson, 17, a star on the school’s football team, lay on the ground a few yards away as if they had been thrown from the car and killed during the collision.

Jennifer Higashi, 15, junior class secretary and the junior princess, knelt by Sylvia’s side, as if in shock.

Marshall Hatch, 16, president of a school club called Friday Night Live, acted as if he were trying to comfort Jim Starr, 17, a school football player who took the role of the drunk driver.

Organizers of the event deliberately chose five of the school’s most popular students so that their classmates would be more likely to recognize the victims, said Julie Bridges, assistant administrator for the county’s emergency medical services department.

In addition to the students, one ambulance worker sat in the passenger seat of the car, pretending he was trapped, and another lay on the car’s hood.

Gold Coast emergency medical technician Steve Kaufmann said they used ambulance workers for these roles because the potential liability costs for putting students in the wrecked car would be too high.

All of the supposed victims were dripping fake blood from artificial wounds.

As the emergency vehicles started pouring onto campus, dozens of students initially started walking and running across the grass toward the scene of the accident. But the crowd of students never grew beyond about 50. As more students would come, others would leave.

Many students never came to the accident scene but went straight to the cafeteria instead.

School officials said later that the sirens hadn’t been loud enough to attract students before they got to the lunchroom.

The simulated accident at Rio Mesa on Monday was the 10th that Gold Coast and county emergency workers have staged since they began the program in 1989.

Bridges said she hoped that some good would come of it even though most of the students recognized it as an act, but admitted that it was the least successful fake accident in the history of the program.

Some of the students who participated were also disappointed.

Demetrius, still wearing gray face paint and streaks of fake blood, joined friends in the outside lunch area afterward.

“I feel used!” he said. “People didn’t believe it. It didn’t work.”