Crash Victims’ Fellow Students Stunned by Loss

FULLERTON —  The classmates of two Sunny Hills High School students who lost their lives in the mangled wreckage of a speeding car tried to sort through confusion and grief Monday for meaning in the tragedy.

Tracy Lee, 15, and San Wan Park, 16, died over the weekend of injuries they suffered while sitting in the back seat of a friend’s 1996 BMW. The car, which had been darting through traffic at speeds over 100 mph, flipped on the northbound Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim on Saturday night.

A gray mood hung over the campus Monday, in stark contrast to last week’s pep rally atmosphere leading up to Friday night’s homecoming game against Mission Viejo High School.

The day began with Principal Loring Davies’ solemn announcement regarding the crash, and throughout the day, students--some sobbing--met with counselors.

“It’s a close-knit campus and community and it needs time to heal,” said Ron Anderson, assistant to the superintendent for the Fullerton Joint Union High School District. Students held informal prayer circles Monday in the quad area and left flowers and scripture readings at a memorial near the school flagpole.

Lee and Park were in the backseat of the car and both were partially ejected when the speeding white sedan careened into a guardrail and tumbled into the underbrush near the Euclid Street exit, investigators from the California Highway Patrol said.

The driver, Jason Kim, 17, was in fair condition Monday at UCI Medical Center in Orange. The car’s fourth occupant, 15-year-old Sonia Kim, who is no relation to Jason, was treated for minor injuries and released hours after the crash, officials said.

The accident was still under investigation Monday and authorities had not decided whether to pursue vehicular manslaughter charges against Jason Kim, said CHP Officer Denise Medina.

Alcohol was not a factor in the crash, and witnesses said the BMW was not racing with any other cars, Medina said. Speeding and driving inexperience may have caused the crash, she said.

“It’s a sad waste,” Medina said. “It’s such a tragic ending to what should have been a special time in these young lives.”

Sunny Hills student body president Brian Kim, 17, said the chill from the deaths was pervasive on campus.

“There was a lot of grief and a lot of questions,” said Kim, no relation to the crash victims. “I was walking to class and you could hear a lot of people crying. It just made me shiver. It was really difficult, even for the people who didn’t know the students. . . . You’ve got to be safe when you’re driving. A lot of us have to learn from this experience and move on.”

Math and computer science teacher Beth Hillger said students were raw from emotion. “You keep expecting them to walk into class,” she said. “It’s a shock, especially for kids more than the adults. They think it’s never going to happen to them--and then they see that it does, and that makes it harder to deal with.”

Hillger added that Sonia Kim is one of her math students. “I am concerned how this will affect her school life,” Hillger said.

The four teens were headed to the school’s homecoming dance, an event Tracy Lee had pleaded to attended despite her mother’s protests.

“I saw her Thursday night; that was the last time,” Tracy’s father, Inho Lee, said Monday. “She wanted to go so bad. She asked her mother 10 times to let her go. My wife said no, she thought she was too young. But after a while I disagreed. She was all smiles. And now she’s gone.”

Unlike the two survivors, Lee and Park were not wearing their seat belts, Medina said.

Park’s family could not be reached for comment Monday. Friends said his kin live in the youth’s native South Korea, although one faculty member said the boy’s parents were en route Monday to Orange County.

Friends described Park as a musician and an affable, hard-working classmate. Lee also enjoyed music, playing the flute and piano. “She liked songs and hymns,” her father said. “She was a good Christian.”

Lee aspired to be a lawyer or journalist. She worked for the school paper, and her colleagues clipped roses Monday and left them in the mailbox where Lee collected her story assignments. The student journalists also worked on profiles of the late students.

Junior Helen Lee, 16, also no relation to the victim, said the crash was a brutal dose of reality.

“It’s kind of weird when someone at your own school dies,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like it would happen to someone here. We think that our friends are immortal, but I guess they’re not.”