Winter Formal accident

Last night, Hans and his girlfriend, as well as a couple of his friends, were headed to the Winter Formal dance at their high school. One of the friends was driving. They left here and it was only a few minutes later that Hans called — they had been in a head-on accident at an intersection about a half-mile away. After making sure everyone was okay, Denyse told him to call the cops. We hurried down there to find firefighters, cops, and four shakened teenagers.

Everyone wound up being okay, and it could have been much, much worse. Basically, they were getting ready to turn left, headed for the freeway onramp. The other car was headed westbound and apparently faster than the driver realized. He pulled out and the other car whacked them. Everyone was wearing seatbelts, thank goodness, and the front airbags deployed.

Since the driver’s parents were away and not reachable, we tried to take him home, but he couldn’t get in the house since his garage door opener had been in the small SUV he’d been driving (actually his sister’s car). We decided to bring him to our house, which was just as well since we weren’t comfortable just leaving him by himself. On the way, we listened as he and his mom argued in Vietnamese on the phone. Poor guy. He hadn’t even wanted to go to the dance in the first place — Hans had talked both his friends into going.

Anyway, the boys were relatively unscathed, apart from shock and brusing. His girlfriend was the worst off — her parents took her to the hospital, as she had some worse bruising on her legs, and I believe a cut on her neck where the seatbelt had dug in, but she was otherwise okay and went on home. Everyone is likely to be much more sore today, as well as a bit shaky. But thankfully we don’t have a lot going on today so can just more or less chill out.