A car crash, and a trail of broken lives

STUART, FLORIDA - Stuart, Florida was a quiet town, where neighbors were friends, until a fatal accident divided their community: Two girls, killed by a teen driver who’d been drinking at a party.

He was sentenced to prison. But for the grieving parents of the dead girls, it wasn’t enough. They said the parents who’d thrown the party also had to pay.

It was a deadly accident that pitted family against family, and parent against parent.

Stephen Bromstrup's Firebird
The Soap Box Derby is a venerable all-American tradition. Kids racing one another in the fancy engineless crates they built with the help of their dads.

Stephen Bromstrup came in eighth in the country in 1996, the year he dashed downhill.

Paul Bromstrup, Stephen Bromstrup's father: He and I built a car when he was 10 years old.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: So you were pretty close as a father-son?

Paul Bromstrup: Oh very. Very.

Paul Bromstrup had good reason to be proud of his little boy. Stephen got straight A’s all through grade school, a solid second baseman in Little League. An all-around happy kid.

Paul Bromstrup: He always seemed to just love life.

When Stephen turned driver’s license age his father had a tantalizing gift waiting for him in the garage: Just as he’d helped build his boy’s soap box derby racer, Paul had restored his wife’s sporty 1988 Pontiac Firebird for Stephen.

Paul Bromstrup: I told him “Here’s the keys to the car” but “This is also a loaded gun. Treat it that way.” And I said it once, I said it a million times.

Murphy: The responsibility of it?

Paul Bromstrup: The responsibility of it was immense. And I knew it.

Three months after getting his license, there didn’t seem to be any reason to worry on a Monday in June 2002 when 16-year-old Stephen called his parents to ask if he could go over to a backyard barbecue party being thrown by a girl from school.

Murphy: Were those the rules that when he was gonna go out and do something he needed to check in with you?

Paul Bromstrup: Always.

Suzy Bromstrup: Always.

Paul Bromstrup: And he didn’t ever get to take the car on his own. He always had to say, “I’m going to so and so, can I take the car?”

Stephen’s curfew was 11 p.m. He didn’t show. About half an hour later, the phone rang.

Paul Bromstrup: A lady said there had been an accident.

Suzy Bromstrup: I was scared. You know, I had no idea what the intensity of it was and when we were driving towards the accident and it was kind of when we came up on a little bit of a ridge, we saw all the emergency lights. And immediately I just started shaking.

Paul Bromstrup: As soon as we came over that rise, it sort of reminded me of a demilitarized zone that you see in a Vietnam movie. Where you see the helicopters coming. It was very scary.                                              

The smashed-up Firebird had come to rest in the median of a four-lane highway. About two hundred feet away on the far side of the road was a demolished Cadillac. A dazed man was standing by the wreck.

Paul Bromstrup: I saw Ted Wetherbee standing there. We knew him, we’ve known him for a long time and I walked-up and he looked at me and he looked very, very distraught. And he started yelling, “This car came out of nowhere. This car came out of nowhere.” And I looked at him. And he looked at me, and he said, “Stephen?” and we both collapsed on the ground.

Stephen was still in the driver’s seat of the Firebird, dazed and bleeding.

In the back seat of the shattered Cadillac two teenage girls were dead. A third girl was ejected from the car.

THE NUMBERS Statistics on teen driving and crashes — Car crashes are the leading cause of death for American teens — more than drugs, guns, or any disease. — A teenager’s first 500 miles of driving are the most dangerous. During that time, they’re 10 times more likely to crash than an adult. — In 2003 alone, teens were involved in an estimated million and a half accidents. — Two-thirds of the teenagers who died in car accidents last year were not buckled up. — During the most recent five year period for which records are available, nearly 35,000 people died when a teenager was driving. — Teen drivers killed in motor vehicle collisions had a youth passenger in the automobile 45 percent of the time. — For every 10 "close calls" in a car, there’s one crash. — 16-year-olds crash at a rate that’s nearly one and a half times as high as 17-year-olds. — 15 to 20-year-olds make up 7 percent of licensed drivers, but suffer 14 percent of fatalities and 20 percent of all reported collisions. — 53 percent of teen driver deaths occur on weekends. — On the basis of current population trends, there will be 23 percent more 16 to 20-year-old drivers on the road in 2010 than there are today — 26.1 million. Sources: Dateline NBC, teendrivingfoundation.org, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

The gravely injured teenager was Jennifer McKinney, the daughter of Paul Bromstrup’s business partner of many years. The girl lying in the roadway had been a childhood playmate of their boy Stephen.

Suzy Bromstrup: We used to get together at Christmas time. And we also vacationed together. I mean, I held her as a baby in my arms.

Stephen had run through the stop sign where the two lane road he’d been on intersected the main highway.

The skids marks and conditions of the cars told a story to trooper Godfrey Koblitz.

Godfrey Koblitz, trooper: The speeds were estimated between 80-90 miles an hour. It was a pretty high-speed for a road that’s posted 25 miles an hour.

Stephen, who had a broken jaw, was brought to the emergency room.

Suzy Bromstrup: Paul and I collapsed to the floor in the hospital. We didn’t know what to do. I mean, here our son was laying there injured and  he had no idea of what had happened yet. Just in shock, total total shock.

The 16-year-old, while old enough to drive, was still five years under age from when he could drink legally.

The test done shortly after the crash would put him just under the legal level for drunk driving.

Paul Bromstrup: I was mad. I had to keep it inside because this was a 16-year old boy who was just in a wreck that killed two young girls.

Stephen went home from the hospital the following morning.

Suzy Bromstrup: We sat Stephen down and explained to him that we have always been the three of us, as one. And what were about to tell him is gonna be all of us in this situation. And when we mentioned to him about the deaths of the two girls and then Jennifer McKinney. He was just...

Paul Bromstrup: He wanted to die.

Suzy : He wanted to die.

Stephen Bromstrup’s crash had resulted in deaths and broken lives. Tests showed he’d been driving after drinking that night.  But how did a 16-year-old get that way? And did another set of parents— not even his— share some of the blame for those deaths?

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