OLYPHANT, Pa. -- Grieving parents, relatives and friends Monday packed a parish church for a memorial service for eight popular teen-agers killed in a highway crash.
'Eight beautiful persons full of life and vigor and youthful dreams and ideals have been taken suddenly from our midst and it will never be the same again -- and it is not supposed to be -- and there is no sense pretending that it can be -- that it will be,' the Rev. Peter P. Madus told the tearful congregation.
St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church was packed to standing room only by at least 700 people during an interfaith memorial service.
The Mid Valley High School, next door to the church, excused 800 students from classes to attend the memorial service. All eight crash victims attended the school.
Killed were Anthony Lukasik, 17, Gregory Labanic, 16; Michael Cheresko, 15; David Thomas, 17; Michelle Cizik, 15, and Jody Hafich, 14, all of Dickson City, and Elizabeth Mecca, 16, and Gail Veltri, 15, both of Throop. They will be buried individually Tuesday.
School buildings were draped in black crepe in mourning, and flags flew at half staff in Throop and Dickson City.
'This is the worst tragedy I can recall,' said Schools Superintendent Thomas F. McDonnell. 'There is a sense of lifelessness throughout the Lackawanna Valley. This will have a traumatic affect on all the students, and the entire community will remember this for years to come.'
He said the high school would be closed Tuesday so students could attend the funerals for their 'lost comrades.'
Lackawanna County Coroner William Sweeney, who performed autopsies Saturday, said the bodies bore 'no visible signs' of drug or alcohol abuse. He said the victims died of 'irreversible shock, multiple skull fractures and massive internal injuries.'
The accident occurred late Friday as the eight were returning home from a party on a winding, seldom-traveled road between Olyphant and Throop near Scranton.
Police said the late-model car, driven by Lukasik, was apparently traveling at a high rate of speed when it struck a guard rail, hurtled 200 feet in the air and landed upside down in a 30-foot deep gully.
