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04/29/2006
Bao Nguyen is comforted by friend Andrew Bates, 17, Friday morning at the memorial. For more photos from the roadside memorial, see our Tragedy on South Airport photo gallery. 'I didn't think Dath would die'Accident survivor describes scene; classmates remember fellow students
Sixteen-year-old Sarah Depue ties a yellow ribbon to a cross posted at a roadside memorial on Friday afternoon. The memorial honors three local students who died in the crash. TRAVERSE CITY — The make-shift roadside memorial grew throughout the morning, a collage of grief arranged by teenage mourners. They brought bouquets, a cross, a card. Bao Nguyen, 17, kneeled nearby and carefully sorted flower stems as traffic flooded by on busy South Airport Road. A day before, Bao had been here. A little after 3:30 p.m. on Thursday she escaped out the back window from the wreckage of a 1995 Mazda. Inside the car were the friends for whom these flowers were meant: Phougheune Siphengphet, 16, Davy Koumliene, 16, and Dath Keovongkoth, 17, were dead and Justin Jason Nguyen, 17, was injured. Bao Nguyen said Justin Nguyen was behind the wheel when the silver car swerved across the center line and collided with a delivery truck. The Mazda spun and then was "rocking back and forth," she said. When the car stilled, she took in the grisly scene about her. There was blood everywhere; it wasn't hers. "I didn't think Dath would die because he was sitting in the middle ...," she said. "When I looked at my boyfriend's face, I thought he was fine." Bao Nguyen was taken to Munson Medical Center, where she was treated and released that day. Andrew Bates, a 17-year-old Traverse City High School classmate of Bao Nguyen, Justin Nguyen and Dath Keovongkoth, was working at a local sandwich shop later Thursday when Bao Nguyen came in. "They had tried to clean her up," he said. But Bao Nguyen still had blood on her clothing and fingernails when she told Bates about the accident. "Oh my gosh, is this some kind of joke?" Bates remembered thinking. "It doesn't really happen like (this)." "It is such a beautiful thing — until it's taken away," he said. Bates and other Traverse City High School students swapped memories of the boys on Friday, as they constructed a carpet of flower buds around a homemade cross. "All I know is I've got a friend that's gone, and it's pretty sad," said Tonja Stowe, 16. Once she and Keovongkoth had a hankering for Little Debbie snacks and came up with $12, Tonja said. "We sold out the gas station," she said. Later, another carload of teenagers pulled up to the memorial spot, a strip of grass next to Tom's Food Market. They stood around, peered quietly at the steadily growing memorial and left. Raymond Chase, a friend of the three boys killed, said it was his idea to create a memorial. Chase said he knew the boys "since we were little" and that they "loved to play basketball." He, too, was stunned when he learned of their deaths. "I was just, like, what?" Chase said. Across town, after classes let out at Central High School, another group of teens gathered around the flag pole in the school's courtyard to share a moment of silence and remember Davy Koumliene and Phougheune Siphengphet, who were sophomores at the school. They held hands, leaned on one another and wrote messages of favorite memories on a large display board. The outdoor sign at the school's entrance read "We Feel The Loss." Ron Buchler, 17, remembered seeing Koumliene at lunch on Thursday and said he and fellow Central students are struggling to comprehend the loss of two peers. He spent part of Friday at the memorial set up at the accident scene. "It really hit home for everybody," Buchler said. Chase Gibbard, 17, said friends were designing a decal to place on their car windows to remember their classmates. Counselors and social workers were at Traverse City Central High School and Traverse City High School Friday morning when the school day started, said Christine Davis, TCAPS human resources director. "We have a crisis management plan that was put into place at each school," Davis said. "It's a great loss for our school district and our community." Along South Airport Road, students marked that loss with flowers and a small picture of a Laotian flag. After Bao Nguyen finished her flower arranging she spoke a bit about Keovongkoth, whom she said she hadn't known a long time. "He was just outgoing, (his) personality," she said. "He always lived life to the fullest." Keovongkoth listened to rap music and was into cars, especially Hondas, Bao Nguyen said. The teens worked on the roadside memorial throughout the morning. Shortly before noon, it had blossomed and grown from what had marked the spot earlier: A small red-and-yellow flowered wreath, and, underneath, three snuffed out cigarettes. Today's Obituaries See related stories:
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