Two Rockville high schoolers are the most recent casualties in a surge in traffic deaths that now claims nine teenagers killed in local Maryland counties this month.
Oswaldo Rosales, of Sandy Spring, and Ricardo Orellana, both 16 and both students at Richard Montgomery High School, died Tuesday when the 1997 Nissan Altima they were riding in hit into a tree. Police say the driver of the vehicle, Jose Miguel Gomez, lost control while driving south in the 14800 block of Avery Road in Rockville around 4 p.m. Monday.
Rosales, who was riding in the front passenger seat of the vehicle, died at the scene. Orellana died Tuesday after having been taken to a shock trauma center in Baltimore, officials said. He was riding in the back seat of the vehicle.
Gomez, a 19-year-old Richard Montgomery student from Rockville, was the only one wearing a seatbelt, police said. He remained in a hospital with non-life threatening injuries Tuesday. He had a valid license, police said.
The mood at Richard Montgomery was somber Tuesday. Grief-stricken students lined hallways and a vigil was held in the evening in honor of both teenagers. Rosales and Orellana were remembered as good-natured, friendly students who shared an interest in soccer.
“He was just so sweet,” Jessica Ranos, 17, said of her friend, Orellana.
She said she became friends with him when the two worked at a Dunkin’ Donuts together, where they became friends.
Rosales was an honors student who liked math and enjoyed fishing in the Chesapeake Bay with his father, Humberto, a friend who was speaking on behalf of his family at their Sandy Spring home said Tuesday.
His family, which also includes his mother, Angelica, and two younger sisters, moved to the country from El Salvador 11 years ago.
“They’re devastated,” the friend said.
And this is just the latest episode in a string of incidents that has baffled police and troubled educators.
On Nov. 12, a 17-year-old Springbrook High School junior was killed when the 15-year-old driver of the car he was riding in went out of control on a slick road and slammed into a tree. None of the vehicle’s four occupants were licensed.
Earlier this month, four La Plata basketball players were killed on their way home from practice Nov. 6. A day earlier, two Calvert County teenagers were killed in a crash.
“Students do have a sense of invulnerability and it’s a horrifically sad thing that this has happened,” Kate Harrison, spokeswoman for Montgomery County Schools, said.
