CLALLAM BAY — Grief counselors will be ready to assist students today as they return to Clallam Bay High School after the weekend car crash that killed two classmates and two graduates.
A counselor or staff member trained in crisis intervention will be in each class all day, working with students, providing materials and answering questions, Cape Flattery School District Superintendent Gene Laes said Sunday.
They will be available throughout the week as students absorb the deaths of 16-year-old sophomore Cassidy Hunter, 18-year-old senior Erik Kroeger, 18-year-old Damien Anderson, who graduated from Clallam Bay High last year, and 20-year-old John Hubble, a 2002 graduate.
The four close friends were killed early Saturday morning on state Highway 112 when Hubble’s Geo Metro, carrying the other three, missed a curve near milepost 27, hit a stump and flew into the Pysht River, landing upside down.
Hunter, Kroeger, Anderson and Hubble were returning to Clallam Bay from a party they had attended in Port Angeles the previous evening.
As news of their deaths spread through the small Clallam Bay community on Saturday, counselors assembled at the school to help students and friends cope with their shock and grief.
That evening, Laes said he received phone calls from Port Angeles Schools Superintendent Gary Cohn and Crescent Schools Superintendent Rich Wilson, offering their assistance to Clallam Bay.
Fewer than two weeks ago, Wilson and his staff had to counsel Crescent students in the wake of 13-year-old Joe Rogers’ suicide.
Rogers, a lively seventh-grader at the school in Joyce, shot himself in the chest inside his language arts class March 17, surrounded by his teacher and 18 other classmates.
Likely a different set of counselors from the Olympic Educational Service District Regional Crisis Support Team will be in Clallam Bay this week than were in Joyce earlier this month, Laes said.
Clallam Bay’s counseling team also is comprised of mental health professionals from West End Outreach and several school staff members trained in crisis intervention, Laes said.