While Danielle Crouse shared how a night of dinner and a few drinks with an old friend changed her life forever, you could hear a pin drop in Judge Vincent Mulieri?s courtroom.
Students from Annapolis, Arundel, Broadneck and North County high schools attended the morning-long Schools in Courts program Wednesday at the district court building in Annapolis, a program designed to show teens the consequences of drinking and driving beyond the crashed car.
In addition to speakers and a video, the students were scheduled to listen to Mulieri rule on real drunk driving cases.
Joey Ciancaglini, 14, a ninth-grader at Broadneck, was friends with two 16-year-olds from Severna Park who were killed by a drunk driver last year.
“[Drunk driving] changes your whole life ? there goes college,” he said.
Crouse told the students about a night three years ago when she drank a few glasses of wine at dinner with a friend and, driving home, ran a stop sign and killed a man.
She was sentenced to 16 months in a maximum-security prison.
“Every day you have to live with it,” she said.
“And I was two blocks from home when the accident happened. I?m not a bad person; I?m not a troublemaker. I made a bad choice,” she added.
The students watched a 30-minute video filled with more first-person testimonies from teens and young adults who were convicted of driving under the influence, some of whom were also involved in fatal collisions.
“I think it?s reality, it?s real and it puts it in perspective,” said Hanna Andersson, 15, a freshman at Broadneck High School. “It definitely makes me realize there?s no excuse to drink and drive.”
“No matter your course, it can be ruined by one poor choice,” Anne Arundel County Superintendent Kevin Maxwell told the students. “The demon you will hear about today, drunken driving, doesn?t care what your plans are, and it doesn?t discriminate by potential.”
Part of the Baltimore Examiner’s 2006 election coverage
