2 recent Maryland high school grads die after car smashes into tree - Washington Post
Just before midnight Thursday, the 2006 Acura TSX approached a bend along Dufief Mill Road in North Potomac. Its young driver and three passengers had been at a party where there had been underage drinking, according to police. They were going fast — very fast — in a 30-mph zone, police said. Four weeks after graduation, Wootton High School’s Class of 2015 lost two of its own: Alexander Murk, 18, of Potomac, and Calvin Jia-Xing Li, 18, of Rockville. A third graduate, Samuel Joseph Ellis, the driver of the car and the school’s star quarterback, was hospitalized in critical condition, and a fourth teenager, a 17-year-old Wootton student, suffered minor injuries, police said. The tragedy came as a heart-rending marker of a season when many parents fear that the exhilaration of the end of high school and the start of summer — with its parties and proms and beach outings — will lead teenagers toward risky actions with... Tom Didone of the Montgomery County police, adding that the circumstances brought to mind the “River Road” crash of 1994, in Bethesda, which killed two teenagers and left two others seriously injured. The crash is emblematic of what AAA considers a disturbing and persistent phenomenon: Teen drivers, especially when they are out of school for the summer, are involved in frequent fatal crashes. Source: www.washingtonpost.com
