Teenager tells peers of deadly accident

By Emily Richmond

Friday, Nov. 5, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.

He stands at the front of the darkened school auditorium, his shoulders hunched slightly and his arms behind his back, left hand clasped tightly around his right wrist.

Dressed in the neon-orange sweatshirt and dark blue pants issued to him by the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center, he speaks quickly, his narrative dissolving at times into run-on sentences.

It's a speech he wrote and memorized. He has delivered it nearly 50 times to audiences of students, community groups and school administrators -- anyone who will listen.

On Wednesday the 17-year-old -- who makes the speeches as part of his juvenile court sentence -- was at Silvestri Junior High School, explaining to an eighth grade class that by driving drunk on Nov. 10, 2003, he killed his three best friends.

Travis Dunning, Josh Parry and Kyle Poff -- all 15 -- were killed. Cody Fredericks, also 15, was severely injured but survived. The teen driver, who had received his license 64 days earlier, sustained broken bones and contusions.

The site of the wreck was less than a half-mile from all of their homes.

As punishment for his crime, the teen was sentenced to juvenile detention until Feb. 23, 2006. He must perform 600 hours of community service, escorted to speaking engagements by a detention officer who removes and replaces the teen's shackles at the beginning and end of each of appearance.

The teen has not publicly talked about the night, outside of his courtroom apology when he was sentenced. Requests for an interview were turned down.

His speaking engagements come with a multimedia presentation and often include one of the friends' parents.

At Silvestri, the Green Day song "Time Of Your Life" plays, the students are shown a video montage of snapshots of the teen's home and life before the crash. His bedroom has red blankets on the bunkbed and a wall of baseball pennants. Family photos show the teen's progression from infant to Little League batter to high schooler.

A message flashes across the screen, telling the students "He is a lot like you."

The teen is shown posing proudly with Dunning, Parry and Poff -- all wearing tuxedos as they prepare to depart for the Green Valley High School homecoming dance. Then the video shifts to footage of the crash, the mangled car and broken glass and an emotional courtroom scene as he is led away after sentencing.

Now 17, he is of medium height and lanky. His hair has been buzzed short by the detention center barber. His voice is soft as he recalls what he can about the wreck.

He says he doesn't remember much, other than his pals piling into his Pontiac Grand Am for an evening of cruising. They hit a house party in Seven Hills where he joined a large crowd in drinking. How much, he doesn't know, but it was enough for his blood alcohol level to register 0.19 at the hospital a short time later -- twice the legal limit for adults.

Six boys were crammed in the car for the trip back to their Green Valley neighborhood. One boy was let out safely at home.

At 12:30 a.m. the car slammed into a cement and cinder-block wall on Silver Springs Drive.

"I am told I was traveling at a high rate of speed and when the road curved I kept going straight," the teen says. "I woke up in the hospital with my mom telling me my three lifelong friends were dead."

Kyle's father, Rick Poff, comes into the auditorium only after the video has shown.

"I can't see my son's face up there on the screen," said Poff, who said he lost a best friend as well as a son in the wreck.

He has made it to most of the presentations. He said he wants people to hear the parents' view and feels speaking is a way of honoring his son.

After the teen finished, Poff took his turn talking to the Silvestri students, urging them to consider the pain their own parents would feel if they were involved in such a devastating incident.

Poff said his family spent agonizing hours after the wreck waiting for the coroner's office to identify Kyle's body.

"They wouldn't let us see him, he was too badly banged up," Poff said. "We had to wait for them to get his dental X-rays. I knew he was in the car, I knew it was him but a little part of me held on to hope that somehow it wasn't him."

At 4:30 p.m. the following afternoon, officials from the coroner's office arrived at the Poff family's home to officially inform them their son was dead.

"Your parents love you very much and all they want is for you to grow up and be safe," Poff said, his voice breaking. "My morning routine consists of walking by Kyle's room and looking inside. It's empty. You don't want to see your parents going through what my family and all our families are going through. Please, be smart."

During the presentation the teen's gaze rarely strays from a point several feet in front of him on the floor. That continues to be his focal point as his mother stands beside him and weeps while talking about the agony that has come from a string of regrettable decisions nearly a year ago.

"When I see the pain he's going through I just remind myself that at least I still have him," says the mother, who has chosen to accompany her son at his appearances. "The only time I see my baby smile is when he talks about his friends."

The teen's parents are facing a civil suit brought by the families of the boys who died. The Dunnings and Poffs have also filed a lawsuit against the family whose Seven Hills home is believed to be the last place the boys visited the night of the crash.

There are questions from the Silvestri students, mostly about how the teen spends his days, what he recalls of the wreck and whether he goes to school. He explains that he hopes to complete his high school requirements through independent study but will never "walk the stage" at graduation.

"I would be too ashamed, knowing my friends should be there with me," he said, his voice cracking. "If I could talk to God and say, 'Take me and let these guys live,' I would."

Several times during his speech the teen urges the students not to pity him.

"Don't feel sorry for me -- they were my best friends, like brothers to me, but they weren't my sons," he says. "Their families are suffering because of what I did."

Jim Dunning, the father of Travis, watched the teen's presentation earlier this month at Green Valley High School, where his son would have been a junior this year. Whether the teen's punishment is sufficient or not is for someone else to decide, Dunning said.

"I'm not God; I can't pass judgment on someone else," Dunning said. "I know that in two years he gets to start life anew and I hope he translates that privilege into something positive. But nothing's going to bring my son back."

Dunning said he hopes to testify before the 2005 Legislature on behalf of a bill that would limit young drivers from having other teens as passengers.

"A graduated driver's license will save lives," Dunning said. "Teen deaths in motor vehicle accidents went up in Clark County and Nevada last year and down for the rest of the country. We have to start taking some serious action."

Robert Butterworth, a psychologist with International Trauma Associates in Los Angeles who specializes in working with adolescents, said the community service portion of the teen's sentence is appropriate.

"It may make him depressed, it may be scary but you can't kill three people and expect to go through the rest of your life unscathed," Butterworth said. "The value here is that he may actually discourage someone else from making a similar mistake. We know from studies that teenagers are more likely to listen to warnings when they come from their peers. Adults are the enemy.

"But when you have a kid just like you standing there, it's a different message altogether."

Last spring several friends of the boys created the Just Keep Thinking Safety: Josh Parry, Kyle Poff, Travis Dunning Memorial Foundation. So far the foundation -- of which Rick Poff serves as president -- has raised $88,000 for driver education and alcohol awareness programs, including a three-week program that just concluded at Silverstri.

Kelly Bucherie, principal of Silvestri, said middle school is the right time to prepare students about the hazards of drugs and alcohol, particularly when motor vehicles are added to the mix.

"When they get to high school they start jumping into cars with friends, older brothers and sisters," Bucherie said. "We hoping to give them a solid foundation so when they face the peer pressure we know is out there, they'll make good choices."