Rash of Traffic Deaths Leaves Pall Over Community : Accidents: Three students, including a scheduled commencement speaker, are among five killed over eight days.

With graduation ceremonies and the end of the school year approaching, Susan Custer, principal at Quartz Hill High School, would normally be in an upbeat mood.

Instead, she was struggling to maintain her composure in the wake of four horrific traffic accidents that killed two of her students and two other Quartz Hill residents in just over a week. Among the victims was a senior who was scheduled to be a commencement speaker.

“I’m perpetually on the verge of tears, wondering when the next shoe will drop,” Custer said Friday. “I’ve spoken with some of the teachers who’ve been here for 30 years, and they say it’s unprecedented.”

The four unrelated crashes, which also claimed the life of a Lake Los Angeles woman and left another Quartz Hill student in a coma, have rocked this usually quiet, semirural community on the west side of the Antelope Valley.

“It definitely affects this area,” said Loretta Pearce, owner of Rettsie’s of Quartz Hill, a flower shop located in the town’s small business district near 50th Street West and Avenue M. “This is a very close-knit community. Everybody cares about everybody.

“It [has] the feel of the Midwest, but it’s out here in the desert. And we’ve kept that feeling for all of these years.”

About 25,000 people live in the area generally identified as Quartz Hill, although parts of it are actually within the boundaries of Lancaster and Palmdale. Another section is unincorporated.

Suburban sprawl crept over parts of the once rural Quartz Hill during the high desert development boom of the 1980s, but longtime residents say there is still plenty of open space and warm, small-town rapport in the area.

Last week, the grandparents of one of the Quartz Hill accident victims visited Rettsie’s to order flowers for the girl’s funeral. “We stood here and talked over the memories of her, the happy times and the sad times,” Pearce said. “We cried together.”

Traffic investigators blamed one of the crashes on alcohol, and the others on driving errors committed on remote desert roads.

“There’s concern,” said Wayne Argo, president of the Quartz Hill Town Council. “Possibly, the traffic controls and the street lights and the speed limits are not keeping up with the growth in population. People are still driving as though it’s a country atmosphere.”

Argo said his advisory panel plans to urge county officials and leaders in the adjacent cities to install more traffic signals and stop signs on remote Quartz Hill roads to prevent collisions.

The recent tragedies began May 25, when Lance Christopher Snodgrass, a 17-year-old student at Quartz Hill High, was killed. The car in which he was riding went through a stop sign at 50th Street West and Avenue I and collided with another vehicle.

Another student in the car, Matthew Tretler, was critically injured and remained in a coma Friday, his school principal said.

On May 29, Kathryn Marie Ward, 18, who was slated to be one of two senior class salutatorians at Quartz Hill High, was killed when her car was hit head-on by a suspected drunk driver near 90th Street West and Avenue H. The crash occurred as Ward, who lived in the adjacent area known as Antelope Acres, was driving home from a friend’s house.

The other driver, Scott Glen Davis, a 22-year-old free-lance welder, received minor injuries. He has been charged with felony vehicular manslaughter.

A funeral for Ward is scheduled for 1 p.m. today at Lancaster Baptist Church. School officials said students who bring notes from their parents will be excused from classes to attend the service.

The third crash occurred Wednesday when Kim Foster, 38, of Quartz Hill, pulled out in front of a semi truck-trailer at 60th Street West and Avenue D and was killed. The truck driver, who had the right of way, was not injured, California Highway Patrol Officer Miguel Siordia said.

The fourth collision, near 150th Street East and Avenue O, occurred Thursday when Jose Manuel Guevara, 16, of Quartz Hill, crossed the double yellow line and struck a car driven by Susan Marie Birawer, 40, of Lake Los Angeles, CHP officers said. Jose and Birawer were killed, and Birawer’s 10-year-old daughter, Trisha, a passenger in the car, was injured.

Although he lived in Quartz Hill, Jose attended nearby Highland High School in west Palmdale, where students and teachers were mourning his death on Friday.

School officials described Jose as a well-liked junior who played chess before classes, maintained a 3.5 grade-point average, excelled in art and hoped to attend college. Al Chronister, a Highland faculty member who provided grief counseling to friends, said that three of the paintings Jose made in art class would be framed and presented to his family.

“This guy was a fine student, not a discipline problem,” Chronister said. “I heard this over and over, that he was very calm, very understanding, a very nice individual. He treated all the other students very well.”

Highland officials said Jose had an after-school job making deliveries of a local newspaper that serves the Latino community. He was apparently on the job, they said, when the accident occurred.

School officials said donations to help his family with funeral expenses can be made at the school or at the Wells Fargo Bank branch on Rancho Vista Boulevard.

Highland Principal Jay Clark said he was stunned by the swift series of deaths affecting his school and the Quartz Hill campus.

“I’ve lived in the Antelope Valley for over 40 years and been with the school district for over 23 years,” he said, “and I’ve never seen something like this, where we’ve had so many fatal accidents in such a short period of time.”