Groups to work together on teen DUI issues

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Wednesday, March 10, 2004 | 10:44 a.m.

Two groups of parents met for the first time Tuesday, after different opinions on how to punish a teen who killed three of his friends in a crash while driving drunk had set them at odds.

The groups -- Moms on a Mission, made up of mothers from well-connected families who urged that the teen driver in the fatal Nov. 10 accident be tried as a juvenile, and the parents of the victims who spoke in the media of a harsher punishment -- decided to work together.

In what Moms on a Mission member Delise Sartini called a "very emotional meeting," the two groups came together on a series of ideas about preventing teen drunk-driving accidents in the future.

Those ideas include increasing driver's education courses -- currently offered at only five of 30 high schools in the Las Vegas Valley, Sartini said -- and lobbying for a bill that would not allow teens to drive with other teens until they are 16 1/2. State law now bans 16-year-old drivers from having passengers under 18 who are not related for 60 days.

Other issues of interest are focusing on parents who let teens drink, stores that sell to underage youths and fake IDs.

The meeting was held at Silvestri Junior High School in Las Vegas, where a brother of one of the victims is a student. The agenda was to iron out details of an April 29 fund-raiser at the school for a foundation the families of the victims had founded: Just Keep Thinking Safety. The foundation will push for the new law and fund school programs on driver's education and alcohol awareness.

But the meeting also served, Sartini said, for the two groups of parents to "join forces ... take this tragedy and make some positive things come out of it."

In the Nov. 10 accident a 16-year-old boy crashed his car into a Henderson wall with four friends as passengers. Three of them -- Travis Dunning, Josh Parry and Kyle Poff, all 15 -- died. The fourth, Cody Frederick, was seriously injured. Members of the Poff and Parry families were at Tuesday's meeting.

Tina Parry, Josh's mother, said the meeting was "positive."

"They were there to help the foundation and that says it all," Parry said, referring to Sartini's group. "Their hearts are in the right place."

The parents of Kyle Poff were not available for comment this morning.

In the months after the crash, a public debate ensued about whether the driver should be tried as an adult, which could have sent him to prison. In the end his February plea bargain included a two-year stint in the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center and 600 hours of community service.

During that time, Sartini said, the split between her group and the parents of the victims wasn't as wide as it appeared.

"The press tried to pit one group against the other," she said.

"But we are all parents of 16-year-olds who could be in either situation -- and either one is a tragedy," she said.

Moms on a Mission includes Monica Guinn, daughter of Gov. Kenny Guinn, and Sartini and Jill Fertitta, members of the family that owns Station Casinos.

"Everybody has the same interest at heart -- something positive to come out of it," she said.