The second boy has also gone to the Lord. Please God–receive the souls of Graeme & Kevin into the Glory of your eternal kingdom, who in their short life brought much hapiness to their families & friends. Please comfort their families & friends and send the Holy Spirit to lift them in this a great time of need, loss and grieving.Amen.
From our local paper (edited out last names ,etc):
*FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — A combination of dark clothing, a shadowy area between two streetlights and a pair of skateboarders who were “significantly into the roadway” were factors in the traffic accident that led to the two township boys’ deaths, police said Thursday.
Graeme 12, died of his injuries late Thursday afternoon at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, authorities said. Kevin 13, was pronounced dead Wednesday night at Centra-State Medical Center in Freehold Township shortly after the 6 p.m. accident, police said.
No charges are expected to be filed in a case that has underscored the twin dangers of skateboarding in the street and wearing dark clothing on the road at night, police said.
“The preliminary investigation supports a finding that this collision was accidental,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Luis A. Valentin said. “There was no evidence of alcohol involvement or speeding, but of course we are continuing our investigation.”
The boys had been skateboarding on Bar Harbor Road between Sabina Terrace and Burki Place and were in the road when they were hit, said police Lt. Dean Smith, who commands the township’s traffic unit. Police described the street as well-lit with both curbing and sidewalks.
Police said the driver of the minivan, 84, of Freehold, was shaken up but uninjured. There was no indication that he failed to control his vehicle or that his actions contributed to the crash, investigators said after an accident reconstruction team’s work at the scene.
Driver wasn’t speeding
“Speed was not a factor here,” Smith said. “He was doing the posted 35 mph speed limit, if that. The problem is that the kids were skateboarding in the street and they were wearing dark clothing. He just didn’t see them, and under the circumstances that’s understandable.”
It is also possible that only one of the boys was wearing a helmet, Smith said.
“We recovered a helmet at the scene. At this point we don’t know if it was being worn by either of the boys,” Smith said.
Bar Harbor Road, a residential street, is not an area where police have received complaints about skateboarders in the street, police Capt. James Lasky said.
Smith said studies by the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety have shown that black and blue clothing are the hardest to see at night. A chart prepared by the department said a night-time driver would first see a pedestrian in dark-colored clothing at about 55 feet away. That might give a driver as little as one second of reaction time, studies show.
Skateboarding is allowed on streets as long as the skaters keep to the right, wear helmets and follow the rules of the road, Lasky said.
“The problems come when they can’t be seen or dart into the middle of the roadway,” Lasky said. “We don’t know if that happened here, but we have had complaints about that from other people at different times. A lot of times kids don’t realize how hard they can be to see at night and how long a car needs to stop.”
School comes together
The boys were seventh-graders at Dwight D. Eisenhower School, said William Setaro, Freehold Township schools superintendent.
He said each teacher was given a short prepared statement to read to their homerooms Thursday, and grief counselors were present, focusing on students’ and staff’s “feelings, fears and concerns.”
“Our teachers will be trying to run a normal day,” he said, noting that “what I think is amazing is that the entire school community is coming together.”
Although police emphasized that speed was not an issue in the accident, those who live along Bar Harbor Road said, generally, the 35 mph speed limit on that stretch is too fast for the internal street in the Juniper Farms development.*
