Kamaikan students and law enforcement shed light on realities of drinking and driving

"I have one last question, Mom, before I say good bye, "I didn't drink and drive, so why am I the one to die?"

A haunting poem about the realities of drinking and driving echoed through the Kamaikan High School auditorium Friday, filled with the senior class, teachers and some parents.

The assembly put on by over twenty student ambassadors and law enforcement was all apart of the Every 15 minutes program.

"Our goal is to educate the soon-to-graduate high school seniors, who all have amazing reasons to celebrate, with the truths that driving impaired whether it be alcohol or drugs, or driving distracted kills people, it takes lives every year," says School Resource Officer Chris Littrell.

A message students running the assembly like Senior Emma Lee, hope their peers carry with them.

"To think about your actions before you do it. It's sad seeing how it effects the living, how they have to live their whole entire life knowing that someone else's decision has killed one of their love ones," says Lee.

The first day of the program includes 24 "dead" students  pulled from class to represent the lives lost every day from drinking and driving. Then Friday, the class is brought together for an assembly including reading a poem, DUI statistics, a skit about a tragic drinking and driving related crash "killing" one of the students and the stories from two local mothers who lost a child due to an impaired driver.

This is the 24th year of the program. Similar programs will be held at Southridge High School next week, March 15-16 and Kennewick High School the following week, March 23-24.