- December 15, 2025
Students in the bleachers were chatty at the start of their assembly Friday, but half an hour in, they were silent. A prom night turned tragic unfolded in front of the junior and senior class of Flagler Palm Coast High School in a dramatic staging of the potential consequences of drinking and driving.
The staging opened on a young girl getting ready for her prom. After arguing with her parents about curfew and rolling her eyes through pre-prom photographs, she said goodbye to her parents and left with her date.
Using sound and smoke, a head-on collision was simulated, leaving four teenagers — including Stephanie and her date — bloodied in their mangled vehicles. Stephanie’s date was driving, and his injuries were the least. He got out of his car and ran to see Stephanie, who was half ejected from the car. The two other victims were conscious, but trapped in their truck.
Stephanie was dead.
The mock DUI took students through the entire response process for such crashes. Two witnesses, also on their way to the prom, stopped and called 9-1-1 and stood by on scene as help arrived.
Flagler County sheriff’s deputies, representatives from the Florida Department of Transportation, the Florida Highway Patrol and Flagler County Fire/Rescue responded as they would in a real event. First, deputies on motorcycles arrived. Patrol cars, a fire truck and an ambulance soon joined. Fire flight also landed in the middle of the FPC football field to take one of the surviving victims away.
One deputy administered field sobriety tests on the scene and learned that Stephanie’s date had been drinking. He was arrested and charged with DUI manslaughter, a second-degree felony.
Students then watched as a state trooper went to Stephanie’s house to tell her parents what had happened.
“Are you sure it was Stephanie?” her father asked as her mother dissolved into tears.
Representatives from Craig Flagler Palms Funeral Home loaded Stephanie into a hearse, and the mock DUI concluded at Stephanie’s funeral.
Sheriff Jim Manfre narrated the dramatization, and as it closed, he asked students to reflect on the gravity of the scenes they’d watched. Stephanie’s dreams of college were quashed. Her date’s life was over. A representative for the State Attorney’s Office told students that the state would press charges, and the drunk driver would be tried as an adult and, if convicted, sentenced to up to 15 years. The chance to attend college and pursue a career were gone, and in its place was guilt for knowing what he’d done.
After the dramatization, Myra Johnson, whose son was killed in an accident after he and a friend went to a party at a fraternity house and spent the night drinking before driving home, addressed the students.
“What you just saw was a staged DUI,” she said. “I’m going to tell you about something that’s very real.”
Her son’s friend was driving them home around 4 a.m. when she fell asleep briefly. When she awoke, she realized she was about to hit another vehicle, so she swerved off the road and into a ditch, causing her car to flip. Later, FHP would estimate she was traveling at 90 mph on impact with the ditch.
Responders said that when they arrived on scene, the girl was running in circles around the car, crying. “I’ve killed my best friend,” she kept saying.
Johnson stressed that drinking and driving, or driving with someone who has been drinking, is a choice. She asked students to think of their loved ones and imagine them going through what she had gone through.
“These accidents are preventable,” Johnson said. “All it takes is your choice.”
The cast
The FPC Drama Club supplied actors for the mock DUI. Kelly Nelson and Jack Neibeslein played Stephanie’s parents; Stephanie Kruitoff and Christian Galvis played Stephanie and her date as they left for prom; Kaylie Evans and John Kearney played the couple after the crash; Tim Lamb and Shekinah Maybin played the witnesses; and Natalie Paz and Darien Halliday played the two injured victims in the other vehicle.
