Updated: Family, friends remember Sand Springs triple-fatality crash victims | News

Sand Springs police on Friday morning recognized the Charles Web page Excessive Faculty college students who had been concerned within the crash, which additionally hospitalized two others.

Ethan Gibson, 17; Cyra Saner, 16; and Kylee Weaver, 16, had been killed within the crash about 12:15 p.m. Thursday, police stated in a information launch. All three had been using within the again seat of the automobile.

Deputy Police Chief Todd Enzbrenner recognized the motive force as Sirrah Mathews, 16. She and front-seat passenger Logan Childers, additionally 16, had been taken by ambulance to Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, police stated.

No replace on their situations was obtainable Friday.

The automobile crashed on Park Highway close to Colony Circle simply south of Sand Springs Lake, Enzbrenner stated Thursday. He stated the automobile was eastbound on Park when it failed to barter a curve within the street to the southeast and went off the northeast aspect of the pavement.

Enzbrenner stated Mathews was the one individual within the automobile sporting a seat belt. He stated pace was “undoubtedly an element” within the crash, though knowledge that can permit authorities to find out how briskly the automobile was touring had not been recovered Friday afternoon.

In the meantime, classmates and family streamed to the crash website all day Friday so as to add flowers, images and different mementos to a rising makeshift memorial.

Jim Weaver stated his granddaughter Kylee Weaver was a very good scholar who had plans for faculty, and she or he was at all times keen to participate in volunteer work together with her grandparents, each real-estate brokers.

However what he remembers most is that “from the time she was little bitty, she at all times did issues with me,” he stated.

His spouse, Joyce Weaver, agreed: “She was the apple of his eye. She beloved her Papa Jim.”

Jim Weaver stated he knew that Kylee hadn’t been heard from by about 3 p.m. Thursday, however then he acquired a name from a police officer utilizing his daughter’s telephone telling him that Kylee was concerned within the accident and that she “didn’t make it.”

“I put a submit on Fb that ‘heaven acquired a brand new angel,’” he stated.

Joyce Weaver, standing subsequent to the memorial and holding a pair of glasses, instructed about how she had been watching televised information studies the evening earlier than concerning the accident, together with scenes from the memorial, when she noticed her granddaughter’s glasses amid the flowers and different gadgets.

“These are Kylee’s glasses,” she stated she instructed her husband.

Jeanie Blatchford was “making an attempt to remain robust for her,” however the sight of the memorial Friday made the tears movement.

“Her” was Kori Fletcher, the mom of Kylee Weaver and Blatchford’s finest good friend for 20 years. However to Blatchford, Weaver was “my first child. I helped increase her. I’ve at all times been part of her life.”

She recalled educating Weaver, then 4 or 5, how one can swim.

The kid was begging to be thrown within the water, however Blatchford resisted.

“However she was at all times so persistent,” she stated. “So I picked her up and I launched her in, and she or he appeared like just a little turtle. All you noticed was the highest of her face. She was doggie-paddling as arduous as she might.”

Blatchford is frightened that her good friend Fletcher now wants some assist to maintain from sinking, and she or he desires individuals to learn about a GoFundMe that has been arrange. It may be discovered at bit.ly/KyleeWeaverFund.

Pupil Kaylah Morgan stated she had trigonometry class with Weaver.

“We had been actually planning in trig class that morning to hang around someday quickly,” she stated.

As Morgan talked, she was holding onto a bit of a damaged mirror with letters on it that was discovered on the crash scene.

She stated a good friend had given Mathews, the automobile’s driver, a sticker with the phrases “You’re necessary” to placed on her rear-view mirror “to remind her to drive secure.”

Junior Ava Durham stated she had recognized Gibson and Saner since elementary college and that she was so glad to have the memorial to go to.

“I adore it,” she stated Friday. “I’m so glad that every one the scholars can come down right here and provides flowers or do no matter they should do.”

And for the day, no less than, schoolwork was largely placed on maintain.

“At the moment at college, we had pastors, counselors and fogeys, and so they had been all arrange within the library. It’s simply wonderful what our neighborhood can do to assist everybody that’s going by way of this loss,” Durham stated.

“We’ve had an eventful final month at our college with all the things that’s occurred, and I actually hope it simply calms down and we’ll return — I imply, nothing’s going to be regular. Nothing will likely be regular. However I simply pray that college will really feel secure once more.”

Junior Kilee Waggoner fought again tears as she described the impression Gibson had on her life.

Gibson, a member of the wrestling workforce, “was supportive for the women workforce to be made, and as a former ladies wrestler, it means lots as a result of it’s a sport made for boys,” Waggoner stated. “And for guys to be so welcoming, it means lots to the women as a result of we’ve got no different assist.

“And for him to be gone, it’s not the identical,” she stated. “However I do know that when we get our Sand Springs ladies wrestling workforce made, he could be proud.”

Denise Luce and her daughter Katelynn, an eighth-grader, got here to the memorial website to recollect Gibson.

Luce, a retired choir and pc keyboarding instructor at Clyde Boyd Center Faculty, taught Gibson within the sixth grade.

“He was at all times smiling,” she stated. “He’d see me even after he left center college, and (he’d say), ‘Hey, Mrs. Luce!’ and simply smile. He was at all times tremendous pleasant.”

Oklahoma State College scholar Reagan Conrad “acquired out of sophistication just a little further early so I might drive down right here” to the memorial website on Friday.

She stated her sister Paige, a sophomore, was mates with the entire crash victims, “so I acquired to know them fairly properly by way of her.”

However Conrad got here not a lot to mourn as to supply gratitude by the use of studying aloud a letter she wrote to Gibson, Saner and Weaver to thank them for having such a constructive impression on her sister’s life.

“It’s so unhappy that I by no means acquired to say thanks to them in individual,” she stated. “They had been simply wonderful individuals.

“They actually stepped up and took her underneath their wing” when Conrad, who graduated from Charles Web page in 2021, went to varsity “and made her really feel included, made her really feel necessary, made her really feel beloved.”

Sophomore Caleb Kelly stated in a message Thursday the scholars concerned within the crash had been “all actual good individuals; kind-hearted individuals.”

He stated he had recognized Gibson the most effective and that “for the 2 years I knew Ethan and the conversations we had, he was an actual real individual and simply all the way down to earth.”

“He would at all times check out me, and he at all times handled his mates like household and would do something for them,” he stated. “Ethan was a really friend- and family-oriented individual and at all times took the time to have a dialog with anybody in the event that they wanted it.”

Kelly stated he and Gibson met by way of mutual mates and had a category collectively.

“My good friend was mates with him and (one other good friend), and he launched me, and so they made me really feel welcome, and I simply acquired good ‘vibes’ from him.”

Kelly had not but been to the memorial on the crash website on Friday afternoon however stated he was planning to go Sunday to take some purple and yellow flowers.

Gibson’s favourite colour was yellow and Saner’s was purple, he stated, and he was “making an attempt to determine Kylee’s favourite so I can have their favourite colours in flowers.”

A Friday Fb submit from Ponca Metropolis Public Colleges requested followers touring to Sand Springs for the Wildcats’ sport towards the Sandites “to put on gold, grey, black and white ribbons or arm bands (the college colours for Sand Springs) to honor the Charles Web page Excessive Faculty college students concerned within the tragic accident on Thursday.”

The submit added, “The Wildcats of Ponca Metropolis ship prayers for peace and luxury to the whole Sand Springs neighborhood.”

Each groups and spectators noticed a second of silence, led by Sand Springs Public Colleges Superintendent Sherry Durkee, earlier than the sport started.