re: Anyone remember a traffic crash on Drusilla Ln in the late 80s that killed like 5 teens?

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If the same information was written in an Advocate article today, it would be like this:

BREAKING NEWS!

19 teenagers were killed during an car crash thing...

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graduated in '88 from Woodlawn and played BREC football(Broncos) with Scott Urbach in elementary and middle school. Played American Legion baseball with John Brett(he played football with the BREC Bengals).

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We may have run in similar circles as I also played BREC football growing up for the Panthers and I also played Legion baseball at Forest Park in D & C leagues.

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If the same information was written in an Advocate article today, it would be like this:

BREAKING NEWS!

19 teenagers were killed during an car crash thing. Some cars were driving fast. One was a truck and there was some kids in the back and stuff..

MORE INFO AS IT DEVELOPS!

Then you never see anything on it ever again.

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EBR Parish Library digital archive.

Click A-Z List, then Advocate Historical Archive.

LINK /

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The teen-agers killed in the accident were ordinary youngsters. They were not great students, but they possessed other talents that made them popular and admired.

Scott Uhrbach, 18, was the youngest of five children, an Eagle Scout, a JROTC participant at Belaire High School and a member of the prestigious Order of the Arrow. He was skilled with his hands, subscribed to Hot Rod magazine and built a go-cart from scratch when he was 16.

He had been involved in an ongoing project of rebuilding a Chevrolet Nova when the accident occurred. His brother-in-law Victor Peterson will finish the task.

Scott was a C student and was one course shy of graduating from Belaire.

In addition to attending school, he held a full-time job at JJ Fleet Paint & Body Co. Much of the money he earned was spent on car parts for the Nova. The parts were scattered around his room at his parent's house on Marjorie Drive.

He liked to camp, canoe, climb rocks, perform Indian dances and lift weights. He dressed conservatively, phoned home if he was going to be late and liked to watch late-night television with his mother Laura "Sis" Uhrbach. His mother would scratch his back as they watched TV.

"He could cook pancakes and doughnuts better than his momma," Sis added.

Scott badgered his mother and sisters about their smoking. He snuffed out lit cigarettes, hid cigarette packs and refused to pick up a pack for his mother when he went to the store. He regularly took vitamins and health pills.

His greatest joy came from his Scouting activities, a love that he shared with his father Gene from the time he was a boy.

His older brother Todd also was involved in Scouting, and Scott could barely wait until he could join. He participated in all levels of Scouting and learned his lessons well. On one Scouting trip, a young man accidentally set himself on fire with gasoline. Scott tackled the youngster, rolled him in the dirt and extinguished the flames.

"It was not that he was a hero," his father said. "It was his training from childhood. He knew what to do."

Another lesson Scott learned in Scouting was not to ride in the back of a pickup truck.

"If he was on a Scouting trip, he would have known it was against the rules," his father said.

Gene Uhrbach believes peer pressure was the reason his son climbed into the back of the pickup.

"Scott, under normal circumstances, would have said, "no.' But when you have others saying, "Come on,' he'd go."

Gene Uhrbach has been involved with hundreds of young men through his Scouting activities. Most of these youngsters, he said, have been likable and well-behaved. He wants his son to be remembered that way.

Erica King, 16, was a collector of notes, pins, pictures and pig figurines.

She also collected friends with her easy-going personality and winning smile.

"She always had a smile on her face, which was something she was pretty well-known for," said Cindy Daigneault, a guidance counselor at Belaire High School. "People identified with her smile -- she had one of those ear-to-ear grins."

Erica was vice president of her sophomore class and recently had been elected junior class vice president. That spot will remain vacant in the fall.

"She just loved Belaire as much as possible," said her mother Cindy.

She organized car washes, worked on her school yearbook, printed posters and decorated goodie bags that were given to the football players before games.

She enjoyed drawing. In her Free Enterprise class, she suggested her group sell boxer shorts to other students and volunteered to decorate 250 pairs of the shorts. The idea was a success.

"She came in here and she said, "You have got to buy a pair of my boxer shorts,' " Daigneault recalled. "Anybody else and I'd say no," but the guidance counselor wound up buying the shorts.

Erica was an average student and was interested in pursuing a computer-related career. She had begun using computers at Westdale Junior High School. One year at Westdale, she was president of the Beta Club, a cheerleader and was named Miss Westdale.

Away from school, Erica frequented the popular hangouts -- McDonald's, Cortana Mall and the 2010 dance club on Florida Boulevard. Although she and her parents got along well, they didn't always agree on her curfew.

At home, she read Seventeen magazine, talked for hours on the phone, watched MTV, shared secrets with her older brother and wrote and read poetry. One piece that she wrote in January 1987 was entitled "Life is a Special Gift." It says, in part:

"Life is special because it gives a person a chance to experience the world and everything it has to offer. You get a chance to see things, breathe the air, which sometimes can be harmful to your health, you get to meet nature and see nature."

Erica fancied low-riding pickup trucks -- she hoped to own a pink truck one day.

Ernie King said he specifically warned his daughter not to ride in the back of one of these pickup trucks.

"It's something she chose to do on her own. Parents can't be there all the time," he said

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It rained a little on the morning of May 22, but the rain quickly passed and the day turned clear and windy.

Erica King and Sandy Brunson had slept at Mickey Castillo's house Saturday night. Their plans this Sunday were to go to New Generation on Staring Lane. They didn't plan to stay out late because they had final exams that week.

The three girls caught a ride to New Generation for a crank-it-up contest -- a contest to determine who has the loudest and best-sounding car stereo equipment.

At New Generation, they ran into Mark Eirick and his friends Henry Lin and Kevin Hidalgo, Scott Uhrbach and his friend John Brett Garafola. According to Hidalgo, the three girls eventually left New Generation with the five young men. They piled into Lin's and Hidalgo's trucks and went swimming at Garafola's house.

After a quick swim, they drove to Forest Park on South Harrells Ferry Road and listened to music.

"I figure each person may have had one beer," Hidalgo said.

By late afternoon, the group was ready to go swimming again. This time, they decided to go to Lin's apartment on Boulevard de Province. Lin, an assistant manager at a McDonald's on Florida Boulevard and a car stereo enthusiast, shared the apartment with his sister, according to Paul Virga, a friend of Lin's.

Hidalgo said he left the group at this point and drove home.

The seven remaining youngsters climbed into Lin's truck and headed back to New Generation to pick up Garafola's truck.

On the way, they stopped at a convenience store to buy beer and ice, according to a school official whose wife saw them at the store shortly before 5 p.m.

No one at the store could recall selling beer and ice to the youngsters. The two clerks on duty said it was busy that day, and they don't recall them being in the store.

Just before 6 p.m., the group was spotted on Staring Lane driving away from New Generation.

Alan Walker, a manager at New Generation, was eating at Popeye's Famous Fried Chicken when he noticed the truck go by.

"It caught my attention because it looked kind of dangerous to have that many kids in the back of a small truck," Walker said.

According to investigating officer Michael Dyess of the Baton Rouge Police Department, Lin and Garafola drove their trucks down Essen Lane to Jefferson Highway.

Garafola was the only person in his truck. The three girls, Eirick and Uhrbach sat in the bed of Lin's truck on what used to be the truck's front seat. The seat had been replaced weeks earlier and was pressed against the truck's tailgate.

Dyess theorizes that the two red low-rider trucks turned right on Jefferson Highway and then left onto Drusilla Lane. Two or three blocks south of Drusilla Lane Park, a woman waxing her car and another standing in her driveway noticed two red pickup trucks pass a white pickup at a high rate of speed.

They told police that a truck with one person inside "passed first and then right behind him came a truck with a bunch of kids," Dyess said.

The next people to catch sight of the truck were two people at Drusilla Lane Park who witnessed the accident.

One witness, alerted by the sound of a car horn, caught sight of the two trucks as they approached the park. The trucks were side by side in a curve on the two-lane road, the witness told police. Lin's truck was in the left-hand lane and appeared to be passing Garafola's truck, the witness recounted.

Sandy Brunson, who survived the accident, has a hazy memory of the day's events but remembers the seconds before the accident. She told Dyess that while sitting in the back of the truck, she could "sense a vehicle coming at her head-on," he said.

"She remembers screaming and wanted the vehicle to move to the right," Dyess said. "She knew that something drastic was about to happen -- terrible."

According to her mother, Brunson recalls Eirick and Uhrbach banging on the roof of the cab and shouting at Lin to get over just before the accident occurred.

Two eyewitnesses said that while Lin's truck was in the wrong lane, a car traveling in the opposite direction appeared.

Lin then either swerved back into the right lane to avoid the car and lost control of his truck, or ran off the left side of the road, Dyess said. Skid marks on Drusilla Lane make it appear that the first theory is correct, he said.

Police have not found the driver of the oncoming car, Dyess said.

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