Prom season is here and many Iowa high schools are holding programs to reinforce the deadly consequences of drinking and driving.
An event next week at South Hamilton High School in Jewell will focus on a crash that killed three young Iowans, according to Amanda Luhman (LOO-mun), the school’s Iowa Jobs for America’s Graduates coordinator.
“There will be a couple different trooper cars around the school,” Luhman says, “as well as the car itself that was impacted in this accident.”
Two 17-year-old Dubuque girls, Kennedy Elskamp and Chloe Lucas, were killed in the crash in July of 2022. The girls were passengers in the car being driven by an 18-year-old man, who was also killed. Troopers say the car was going nearly 150 miles an hour when it left the road, went airborne and rolled into a ditch.
“The trooper that investigated this accident will be on site and will be talking with the students about the investigation side of things,” she says, “like how they can figure things out, and the consequences that go with something like this.”
The state patrol said speed and distracted driving were also factors in the fatal crash. The parents of the two girls who died in the accident will also be at the event in Jewell.
“They will be speaking on behalf of the impact that this crash had on them, the school, the community, and all the friends that this made an impact on,” Luhman says, “and then making the important decisions when behind the wheel.”
The program is scheduled for next Tuesday.
An Iowa DOT report released last year found that since 2020, Iowa drivers between the ages of 14 and 19 were involved in nearly 66-thousand crashes, resulting in more than 300 deaths.
(Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City contributed to this story.)