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July 5, 2008

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Photo by Adam Vogler

Adam Vogler/Gazette Emporia High students look on while a member of the Emporia Police Department talks to Joel Austin who was portraying a drunk driver during a mock DUI at EHS Tuesday April 29. No accident occurred and no one was injured.

Layne Sinks might have been preaching to the choir Thursday morning when he talked to fewer than 100 Emporia High School students about the brain damage and permanent injuries he still copes with as the result of his decision to ride with a drunken driver.

Sinks was brought to EHS by the school district’s Safe and Drug-Free Community and Emporians for Drug Awareness.

The voluntary assembly, held during the school’s seminar period, was presented only to students who signed up to attend. Those who signed up had to be academically eligible before they were given yellow passes to hear Sinks, several students and teachers said.

Some of the students were concerned that attendance was not mandatory.

“I don’t understand why we can pull the whole school out for an (athletics) assembly,” one of the students said before Sinks began his presentation.

Abby Phelps was disappointed at the small number of students who chose to attend.

“This is something that everyone should hear,” she said. “It’s just practical advice.”

Abby said she thought the assembly should have been mandatory.

“People aren’t here — the ones who need it,” she said.

Kristen Garcia agreed.

“It’s a message that needs to be heard by the students who will end up making these bad decisions,” Kristen said.

“The kids that did come were the ones that won’t drink and drive,” said Joel Austin. “The kids who will drink and drive didn’t want to hear why they shouldn’t drink and drive.”

“I understand that, and that’s a good point,” Principal Scott Sheldon said Monday afternoon. “But there’s other kids that want to stay in the class and get their work done as well, and it goes both ways on that, and we understand that.”

Assemblies generally are held during seminar, a period when all of the students are free to work on studies on their own or with specific teachers.

Sheldon said that the number of all-school assemblies at EHS is relatively small for that reason.

“We don’t assign assemblies during the day because kids also complain they don’t want to give up their seminar time for a variety of other reasons. … A lot of kids who are responsible wanted to stay in their seminar classes and work on things for other classes.”

Aaron Wyatt thought that Sinks’ story was one that should be seen as well as heard.

“I think it’s a really good example of what can happen in a DUI — show the reality of what happened,” Aaron Wyatt said. “Definitely, seeing what happens with your own eyes is better than hearing what happened.”

What the students saw Monday was a 36-year-old man who, after spending three months in a coma and years of pain and hard work at rehabilitation, has regained the ability to speak and walk.

He showed no photos from the accident or the time spent in the hospital and in rehab. Instead, he showed only himself — on-screen in a video of his taking batting practice before the accident and on-stage as he talked to the students.

His injuries and the damage that remains came directly as a result of a bad decision made at the age of 19.

“Yes, I speak differently than you because I had a brain injury,” Sinks said.

He has limited use of his left hand, and that only because it contains a steel plate to reinforce the bones that were pulverized in the accident.

The date was Nov. 23, 1991, a Friday.

“I did the exact same thing all the kids did. I got home from work and I called my boys,” Sinks said.

One of the others knew of a friend who was having a party while his parents were out of town.

“Once we get there, we start drinking, and we don’t stop ’til it’s all gone,” he said.

With nothing to drink and no one to buy for the under-aged boys, they decided to go “party-hopping.”

“Every party I’ve ever been to had some kind of alcohol,” he said. “I was always up for a good time. I was rambunctious, I was a loose cannon, you guys. I was all about having a good time. I didn’t think beyond that.”

At one of the houses, where they paid a $2 cover charge for admission, Sinks saw two people he recognized as members of rival gangs. When a shot rang out, Sinks said he dove to the ground for a few seconds before joining the others that were running to get away in their cars.

The three young men headed out to find another party.

“We thought we were getting away from danger,” he said. “We didn’t think about the danger we were getting into.”

The next thing he remembered was hearing screaming. The driver was speeding and had seen headlights coming directly at the car. The driver reacted naturally, without thinking and without allowing for the high speed at which the car was traveling.

“He jerked the wheel,” Sinks said. “When you do that going that fast, it’s not good.”

The passenger in the back seat was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected.  The car rolled over the passenger and killed him before stopping 580 feet away from the impact. The driver walked away with a few stitches, and Sinks suffered serious brain damage in addition to other injuries.

He spent three months in a coma, on a respirator and partially paralyzed.

“My injury was so severe that they wanted to send me to a nursing home,” he said.

Instead, through months and years of therapy — physical, occupational and speech — he learned again how to walk and talk and become independent.

“I’m no quitter; I’m a survivor,” he said.

His speech and movement, however, still carry evidence of the accident.

“What you see up here is a living example of what a DUI crash does to you — if you’re lucky,” Sinks said. “My partner died. I survived. (The driver) walked away from the crash with nine stitches to his ear.”

Now, Sinks spends time each spring and summer talking to students about the consequences of bad choices, instead of having the athletic career he had hoped for.

“Everybody has something they excel in,” Sinks said. “Baseball was my stuff.”

He told the group he had been named to Wichita’s all-city team in two positions — second base and pitcher. He’d had a 12-0 record with a 1.19 earned-run average and a .451 batting average. He was being scouted by the Cincinnati Reds, had a baseball scholarship at Butler County Community College and thought he had a chance for a career in baseball.  He said hadn’t thought of the possible consequences of riding with a driver who had been drinking.

“It never crossed my mind,” Sinks said. “Now I’m stuck. This is permanent.”

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