Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
On Tuesday, 14-year-old Katie Dyer put her arms around Tri-Center school nurse Jen McGee and told her goodbye.
One day later, that hug felt final in a way McGee could hardly have imagined 24 hours earlier.
Katie, whose family was planning to move away from the Tri-Center school district, died Wednesday morning after she and three other students were thrown from a car that crashed on their way to school.
McGee, one of the first people on the scene, again put her arms around Katie, this time trying to resuscitate her. Katie was flown to Creighton University Medical Center, but she didn't survive.
Samantha Lynn Reid, 15, who was driving the 1994 Nissan Sentra, lost control of the car, which rolled into the ditch. Katie, Samantha, Cari L. Wilson, 16, and Chelsea Jean Birtwell, 16, all were thrown from the car.
Samantha and Cari were taken to Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs. Chelsea was flown to Creighton University Medical Center.
By Wednesday afternoon, Samantha, Cari and Chelsea were stable, said Tri-Center Superintendent Brett Nanninga.
The school community was worried and hopeful for the three who survived but also remembering the sweet, soft-spoken student who didn't.
Katie was mild-mannered, respectful and warm, Nanninga said.
“She was the kind of girl you were drawn to, more than anything, because she was such a nice young lady,” Nanninga said.
In anticipation of her move away, Nanninga said, Katie had spent the past couple of days bidding her classmates, teachers and other staff members farewell. On Wednesday, many of them watched from afar as emergency responders took the girls away.
The accident happened just after 8 a.m., when many students were already at school. The Tri-Center campus sits on a hill, looking down at Highway 191, where the accident occurred.
“We could see the emergency responders. We knew our kids were there,” said Nanninga. “It was tough.”
Few students saw the crash up close, said Nanninga, although one male student, a senior, came upon it on his way to school.
“He was really hurting. He'd never seen anything like it in his life. He was standing there with several bodies on the ground and a vehicle torn to shreds, just trying to make sense of it,” Nanninga said.
School was dismissed early on Wednesday, because the district had scheduled parent-teacher conferences for that evening. The school will have counselors on hand for students throughout the week.
Nanninga said he heard from authorities that the car drifted off the pavement and into the mud. They told him that Samantha had tried to correct the course of the car and then lost control, with the car rolling three or four times before coming to rest on its roof.
That could be true, said Iowa State Patrol Sgt. Daniel Schaffer, but it could have happened thousands of other ways as well.
“Maybe a tire blows out and the driver loses control. Maybe the driver is inattentive and drifts off the road. Maybe the driver swerves for an animal and rolls. There are so many possibilities. Until we review the information, we can't offer an opinion on why it occurred,” Schaffer said.
A thorough investigation will take at least a month, Schaffer said, and will involve witness statements and an examination of damage to the car, medical examiner reports and marks on the roadway, among other details. Investigators also will reconstruct the crash.
Decisions won't be made on whether any citations will be issued or charges filed until the investigation is finished, Schaffer said.
“There are collisions that are truly accidents,” Schaffer said.
Samantha was driving with a “school license,” which allows students who are 14½ or older to drive to and from school. Students must have had a valid learner's permit for at least six months without incident, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation.
A school official and a parent must authorize the permit. Iowa law doesn't dictate whether a school license driver can carry passengers or not, but drivers with school permits aren't allowed to pick up or drop off students in between home and school.
It's common for young students at Tri-Center to drive with school permits, Nanninga said, because of the school's rural location.
Contact the writer:
444-1310, elizabeth.ahlin@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
