STUDENTS SEE STAGED REALITY
By Jason Wells
Glendale News Press
May 24 2007
As a prelude to prom season, fire, police and school officials perform
fatal auto crash.
Glendale High School Senior Melissa Legaspi plays the role of accident
victim during a representation of a car crash enacted in front of
the school using Glendale police and firefighters to teach teens the
dangers of drunk driving.
~U Students see staged reality
~U Fights disrupt school day
~U POLICE REPORT
Dr. Samar Masri watched the heart monitor for a few more seconds as
nurses performed emergency CPR in a final attempt to revive 18-year-old
Melody Babakhanians.
"Let’s call her time of death at 11:44," Masri said as nurses
reluctantly stopped their rhythmic pumping motions on Babakhanians’
bloodied body.
Just minutes earlier, the Glendale High School student had been sent
through a car windshield during a drunk-driving accident, landing on
the car’s hood.
Nurses pulled a white sheet over her body and closed the curtain.
Inside the emergency room at Glendale Memorial Hospital Wednesday,
it was now one girl lost, with one still left to save.
Seventeen-year-old Beradin Jezeh lay just two feet away while
Dr. Ed Repetti directed his nurses to order a barrage of scans as he
stabilized his patient.
The head trauma Beradin sustained in the same accident would require
brain surgery, but she was stable for now, he said.
Down a network of halls, in the hospital’s chapel, Masri had just
informed Babakhanians’ parents that their daughter, Melody, had died.
"When she came to us, her heart was not working," Masri told them.
"She didn’t make it."
Adrinea and Wiggen Babakhanians did not weep. Instead, they stood in
stunned silence as Masri left the room. A chaplain offered words of
comfort that seemed to hit the ground before reaching their ears.
Hospital workers escorted the parents back to the emergency room.
"Oh, my God, what happened to you?" Adrinea Babakhanians asked her
daughter’s lifeless body, as if she had just returned home with a
black eye.
A STAGED PURPOSE
But Melody Babakhanians would, in fact, answer her mother. She would
even give her a hug, because this time, everyone involved in this
fatal drunk-driving accident got second chances.
It was staged.
"We are all with reality and we need to make sure we’re driving home
more than just words to these kids when it comes to drunk driving –
that there’s consequences," Glendale Police Lt. Don Meredith said.
Those consequences – death, injury, damage, trauma, emotional pain –
are what fuel the Police Department’s two-day, $20,000 drunk-driving
prevention program titled "Every 15 Minutes," based on statistics
cited throughout the day by officers, who said every 15 minutes a
person dies in the United States in an alcoholrelated traffic accident.
In 2004, 40% of the state’s 4,329 traffic accidents were
alcohol-related and 29% of fatal accidents – or 1,250 – involved
drivers with blood-alcohol levels above the legal limit of 0.08,
according to the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration.
In Glendale, 244 people have been arrested so far this year on
suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics,
according to police reports.
To illustrate the 15-minute statistic, one student was removed from
a classroom every 15 minutes by a school resource officer, who then
read aloud that student’s obituary.
These students, about 28 in all, made up the "living dead" group,
and the majority of students comprising the event’s participants.
CRASHING INTO VIEW
In front of the entrance to Glendale High School on Wednesday, six
Glendale High students sit stunned and injured inside two separate
cars that had just collided as the result of a drunk driver.
Melody Babakhanians lies face down on the hood – a stream of blood
running down onto the car’s bumper.
Seventeen-year-old Melissa Legaspi’s dead body is strewn on a
sidewalk. She was a pedestrian.
Two Glendale Police motorcycle officers are the first to arrive and
give an initial assessment to Glendale firefighters and paramedics
who pull up minutes later with full lights and sirens.
Five of the passengers – all Glendale High juniors and seniors –
suffer only minor injuries.
Melody Babakhanians is in serious condition, as is Beradin, who was
driving one of the cars.
The other driver, 18-year-old Orlando Molina, suffers only
minor injuries, but is quickly pulled aside by police for a DUI
investigation.
About 1,500 Glendale High seniors and juniors are watching this scene
unfold as if it is real.
Firefighters are forced to extricate Beradin using hydraulic tools
and cutting blades that slice the windshield out and snap the car’s
A-pillars, allowing crews to peel the roof back like a spa cover.
Beradin is then gently removed and transported alongside Melody
Babakhanians to the hospital.
Molina is arrested for failing his DUI tests and taken to the Glendale
Police Station, where he is booked into the city’s jail.
THE COURTROOM
A few hours later, Molina stands before Commissioner Steven K. Lubell
in Glendale Superior Court in a bright orange jumpsuit – his wrists
in handcuffs, his ankles in shackles.
Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Ed Greene reads aloud the
charges against him.
Molina pleads guilty to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter
and two other DUI-related charges.
He is sentenced to 15 years in state prison and escorted out of the
courtroom by a Sheriff’s deputy.
The gavel is slammed and the day is done.
But the lessons aren’t.
"This is what happens every single day in this courtroom," Lubell told
the group of student actors and members of the "living dead" group
seated in the courtroom after the sentencing. "People die every day.
"Spread the word to your friends and peers, because they’ll listen
to you."
He didn’t have to tell Tenny Gharibian twice.
The 18-year-old Glendale High senior who sustained faux-injuries in
the staged accident had clearly been affected by the day’s events as
she walked outside of the courthouse.
"I was like, ‘Wow,’" she said. "It’s especially important this time
of year with prom coming up and everyone’s in party mode."
Charibian and other student actors spent Wednesday night at a Holiday
Inn in Burbank for a program that included team-building, DUI speakers
and a letter-writing event, where they crafted goodbye notes to their
parents as if they had been given the chance before they "died,"
said Glendale Police Reserve Capt. Bill Torley, who coordinates the
entire event.
For Glendale Police and fire crews, these students represent the
gems of success that the highly coordinated effort has churned out
for three years now.
"At these ages, they need to understand the severity of the
consequences," Glendale Fire Capt. Tom Propst said.
On the steps of the Glendale Police Station Wednesday, 16-year-old
Alex Amirkhanian offered an insight into what most participants had
felt at certain moments throughout the day.
He was one of the passengers who suffered minor injuries in the
staged accident.
"When I saw Amy crying, I, like, tripped out for a few minutes,"
he said.
"It was really weird."