Sorrow and anger, those two mainstays of grief, become amplified tenfold by the circumstances of this situation — youth killed senselessly by a voluntary carelessness. Young people are the manifestation of years of parental love, nurturing and sacrifice; they are the dreams of a generation, the future leaders and therefore the redeeming hope for us all. For those of us whose youth has long passed, they are who we once were — in that dew of blossoming possibility and shimmering optimism now faded.

For us parents, they could be — are — our children. After the shock, tears, and anger subside, when people's lives resume while the lone survivor and the parents of the dead will still be struggling unremittingly with their pain, the best tribute will be for each of us to do our level best to reduce such tragedies in the future. We each know, deep down, what that is.



While the tragic death of four teenagers is horrific, Scott Owens doesn't deserve decades in prison, as some people demand. It was the teenagers, not Owens, who were driving on the wrong side of the road at the moment of their head-on collision.

The teenagers were breaking two safety laws that prohibit teenagers from driving at night and from driving without an adult in the car. Perhaps what the Legislature should do is prohibit teenagers younger than age 18 from having any sort of drivers license. Owens' culpability is a reckless disregard for life, which is less a malicious intent to harm.

An appropriate punishment for Owens would be something like a lifetime ban on drinking alcohol (a punishment not available under current law), one year of incarceration for each life taken or maimed, and community service teaching others about the risk of drunken driving. He also owes the families and our community a genuine apology. Then he deserves another chance.


I read the story of the terrible accident that killed four teenagers and injured another one, and it just broke my heart. I don't understand how the teenage driver's parents could have allowed a 16-year-old without enough driving experience to be carrying four other teenagers in the car, with no adult in the car, after midnight.

Without an adult in the car, the teenage passengers were probably just doing what teenagers do: laughing and talking and having a good time, distracting the driver.

A more experienced driver might have been able to avoid the accident, even if the driver of the other car was at fault. This accident should not have happened.



We have had horrific news during the past few days of the deaths of four teens, with another life hanging in the balance, in a collision with an allegedly drunken driver. One article tells us that Scott Owens, who was driving the wrong way on the Old Las Vegas Highway, had been evaluated recently and had been found not to have a substance-abuse problem.

Bully for him! Now we know that it doesn't require an addiction to drive drunk on the wrong side of the road. It just takes booze and bad judgment. Tuesday's paper also tells us that a Santa Fe police officer was arrested early Sunday and charged with aggravated drunken driving.

A couple of months ago, an assistant district attorney here in the First Judicial District was arrested for DWI. It wasn't until the newspapers outed her that she resigned. Even those in the law-enforcement community — cops, prosecutors — don't take drunken driving seriously.

The young people mourning their dead friends have it right: Our laws are too lax. Our laws need to be revised so that a first DWI has the driver cooling his heels in jail for a month.


A tragic accident occurred early last Sunday morning on the Old Las Vegas Highway between exit 285 and Old Pecos Trail — a stretch of highway that has been the scene of numerous deaths throughout the years.

Four years ago, the Department of Transportation presented plans to area residents to address highway-safety concerns, backed by a study that projected significant traffic increases over the next 10 years. Regrettably, because of public pressure against changes for non-safety reasons, not all the concerns were addressed.

We can no longer regard this stretch of highway as an old county frontage road, but rather, as a main transportation artery for those living in the areas east of Santa Fe.

The Department of Transportation must re-evaluate the safety issues concerning Old Las Vegas Highway. How many more crosses must we "bare" before these issues are solved?



I was saddened to read of the deaths of the two Santa Fe Prep and two Monte de Sol students in the car crash. I cried on reading the news account in The Santa Fe New Mexican online. I am in Colorado visiting my son and his family. As a public-school teacher in Santa Fe (and father and grandfather), I cannot tell you how much their deaths affected me. They are students like all students. We must, and I must, help prevent deaths caused by wrong-way alleged DUI drivers. We must.


Barbara Owens' urge to protect her child is commendable, but a 28-year-old-man no longer is a child, and her reported statements equating her son's behavior with the drinking and driving habits of "most people" and "other people" promote an untrue sense of status quo, of social acceptance, and frame of reference that I believe is dangerous to our children.

We must shout down these kinds of statements. Loudly. "Other/most people" .... "never get caught" because they do not exhibit the kind of behavior that killed four children, and Scott Owens' behavior is not the norm.

We feel Ms. Owens' pain, and I feel my own. For the sake of minimizing the effect of excusing DWI, I for one, will stand up and say: I have never driven a car after having a few too many drinks. Not once. Not ever. That is the norm.



As the owners of a new restaurant, we have been considering getting our beer and wine license which, as anybody will tell you, can add substantially to the revenue of a food-serving establishment. The problem we have been struggling with is that we are out on Turquoise Trail, a road that suffers more than its fair share of DUI tragedies.

Nobody walks to our restaurant. The recent tragedy on Old Las Vegas Highway seems to have forced our hand. We are no longer pursuing that beer and wine license and have suspended that pursuit for the foreseeable future.

We are aware that there are those who are capable of being responsible drinkers, but clearly there are those who are not, and to possibly have even the slightest responsibility for even the smallest of tragedies is more than we are willing to accept.



I am saddened and sick over the death of the four teenagers that happened last Sunday.

How many more useless deaths have to occur before our legislators will pass laws that will have enough power to stop this horrible problem? We can wait no longer to do something.