A fiery crash in Woodacre took the lives of four teenaged girls and severely injured two others last Friday evening, a cataclysm that has plunged the close-knit communities of San Anselmo, Fairfax and the San Geronimo Valley into grief and prompted calls for safety measures on the winding route through the redwoods.
Olive Koren, age 14, Sienna Katz and Ada Kepley, both 15, and Josalynn Osborn, 16, died in the single-car collision, which occurred shortly before 7:30 p.m. on San Geronimo Valley Drive after their car struck a tree less than half a mile from town. Three died at the scene, and another was pronounced dead en route to a hospital.
Marley Barclay, age 14, and Elsa Laremont Stranczek, age 16, were pulled from the car by a group of local passersby who shattered windows as the wreckage erupted into flames. Marley was released from the hospital on Tuesday; Elsa remains in critical condition.
The girls, all students at Archie Williams High School, were on their way to Sienna’s house in Woodacre at the time of the accident.
From her bed at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland on Monday, Marley provided an eyewitness account of the moments leading up to the collision. According to her parents, Jessica Glantz and Ross Barclay, who spoke at a news conference that day, their daughter left home shortly before 7 p.m. and walked to downtown Fairfax to meet her friends, including Elsa, who had just finished a shift at work. They piled into Elsa’s Volkswagen Tiguan and headed westward.
Marley told her parents that just before the crash, an oncoming vehicle drifted across the center line on a blind curve, forcing their S.U.V. to swerve off the road and into the tree. All six girls were wearing seatbelts and there was no evidence of alcohol use, the family said.
As of Wednesday morning, California Highway Patrol investigators had not yet determined what caused the crash.
The tragedy underscored a perennial dilemma in the rural valley, where the high school offers no bus service and many parents work during pickup hours. For 16 year olds, driving is often both a necessity and a rite of passage, even as California law prohibits new license holders under 18 from transporting other teens for their first 12 months.
The deaths touched everyone in the Ross and San Geronimo Valleys, where the victims were familiar faces.
“We’re all entangled,” said Katherine Sanford, a Woodacre resident and the eighth-grade teacher at Lagunitas Middle School. “We watch each other’s kids grow up. We watch them meet the milestones. We celebrate the beautiful ones and, when things are hard, we show up in every way that we can.”
By Monday, the debris at the crash site—glass, rubber, eyeglasses, books and papers—had been cleared away and replaced by a growing memorial. Bouquets, stuffed animals, balloons, Red Bulls and Takis, vapes and cigarettes, devotional candles and prayer flags, Polaroids and other mementos were arranged beneath the towering redwood’s charred and splintered trunk.
For valley residents, the tragedy was a reminder of past accidents, including one last year just a few trees down on the same stretch of road that left a Woodacre teen critically injured. Citing the road’s 40 mile-an-hour speed limit, narrow shoulders and blind curves, many locals this week called for new safety measures or even a permanent closure.
Ms. Sanford reached out to county officials after Friday’s crash, urging them to install guardrails, lower the speed limit and add warning signs ahead of the abrupt turn along what she described as a “tunnel-like stretch” of road.
Others called for stronger measures.
“The road should be shut down,” Woodacre resident Greg Arnold said. “They should make it a memorial park.”
His wife, Allison, agreed. “Those trees could be a nice green space for the community to honor them and memorialize this huge loss, and we don’t need it for traffic reasons,” she told the Light.
An online petition circulating this week seeks to restrict the roadway to non-motorized traffic.
Yet opponents have raised concerns about limiting emergency evacuation routes, and some vehemently oppose the idea of closing the road. San Geronimo Valley Drive is one of a few routes from Woodacre to Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.
Still, Alan Charne, a retired teacher in the valley whose grandson attends Archie Williams, said that he and many of his neighbors are calling for change.
“In my 20 years of teaching, I’ve seen terrible tragedies but nothing anywhere close to the scale of this,” he said. “One kid is hard enough to deal with. This is incomprehensible.”
On Monday, Supervisor Dennis Rodoni said the county’s Department of Public Works had opened a review of the road.
Hundreds of mourners—high school students, parents, friends and neighbors—gathered for a vigil on Saturday evening at Fairfax’s Contratti Park, where they filled the baseball diamond and bleachers.
“These are loved ones who were known to us, and we hold them close,” Rev. Scott Clark of First Presbyterian Church in San Anselmo said to the crowd. “These are hard times in general, and this day is excruciatingly painful.”
Grief counselors were dispatched to all campuses in the Tamalpais Union High School District this week, and other school districts have offered counseling support.
At Lagunitas Community School, where several distraught eighth graders sat out of class on Monday, Ms. Sanford gave the same advice she has leaned on in past sorrows.
“After each one of these horrifically unimaginable things has happened in our community over the last couple of years, I just remind them to never underestimate the incredible miracle of an ordinary day and showing up for the people you care about,” she said.
Online fundraisers for Olive, Josalynn, Ada, Sienna and Marley have collectively raised more than $600,000. You can search their names at gofundme.com to donate.