Dane Gibson
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 13/99) - When park officer Brent Beck came over a rise on the Ingraham Trail to find a Buick upside down in a lake, the 19-year-old jumped out of his truck to see if he could help

Seconds later, he was administering CPR to his 15-year-old friend, Shannon Templeton, who, he soon learned was already dead.

"The lights on the car were still on when I drove up, so I knew it just happened," Beck says.

"There was another guy on the scene and he was pulling out a girl. I recognized her when she was out. A lot of things went through my mind. I thought -- I know this girl, so I must know the others in the car, too."

Beck spent the last week going over what occurred that Saturday evening. He knew the five occupants of the car well. Three were now dead.

Nightmares still play on him in the night. During the day, the scene is never far away.

"They were all friends of mine. I tried to do CPR on Shannon but she was already gone. They were all already gone," Beck says quietly.

He was on his way back from Reed Lake when he came upon the accident with park officer Greg Connolly. There were three people Beck didn't know already on-site trying to help. He remembers hearing someone shouting as he got out of his truck: ŒThey're in there. They're still in there.'"

Then, he said, everything went silent.

"When I heard someone say there were still people in the car, I could feel it like a punch to the gut. After that, everything shut off. I couldn't hear anything. You don't feel nothing. I just concentrated on what I had to do," Beck says.

Running for their lives

Beck remembers bits and pieces of what transpired next. He ran for the First Aid kit in the truck and recalls ripping the bolted case off its moorings. He didn't feel the water when he waded in. They couldn't find the 16-year-old driver, Murray Zoe. Beck was vaguely aware that Darren Greenland was also dead.

Back on shore, someone hooked a chain from the park truck to the car.

"They said ŒGo' so I jumped in and hit the gas. The car moved but as soon as it hit the shore, the truck went sideways," Beck says.

"We tried to find the driver but we couldn't. The ambulance drivers showed up. They had wet-suits and they got him out."

The RCMP and ambulance attendants were now handling the scene. People were milling around.

Beck tried directing traffic, but there were few cars on the road so he sat with the two survivors.

"I tried to calm them down, but I didn't know what to say because I knew what they were feeling," he says.

"You know, if I wasn't working that night there's a good chance I would have been in that car, too. They were all alive when the car hit the water. I think things like if I didn't stop to take a leak on my way, I would have been there sooner. These are the thoughts that stick in my head."

As the emergency team took over, through the chaos of everything, a song played in his mind, over and over.

"It was funny but the song goes: ŒIt can't happen to me, I got an angel watching over me,'" says Beck

That song is part of the reason he's telling the story now. A message he's heard so many times from his parents and teachers holds new meaning for him now.

A message that so many youth think is a "lecture" that doesn't apply to them.

Life is precious

"As I was pulling one of my best friends from the wreck and trying to revive her, the Œdon't drink and drive' and the Œdon't speed' messages were coming back to haunt me. Since the accident, I keep saying to myself: ŒLife is precious,'" Beck says.

"I've done dumb things that I never thought about, but I realize now how quickly little things can turn tragic. I'm saying, as a person that has seen the outcome of drinking and driving, if you do it, you're a bloody idiot. That's not a lecture, it's the truth."

Beck's park supervisor has scheduled him on sites that avoid passing the accident area. Tuesday, he went back to the scene, located just past Powder Point, on his own.

He kneels on the shore of the small lake where others have constructed a fragile cross made of branches.

Flower bunches drift among the lilypads, the petals of which fan out over the water. The wind knocked over three potted plants left by mourners. Beck sets them upright. He cries for the friends he lost, and their families.

Placed at the foot of the twig-cross is a rock, and before leaving he takes time to make out the faded writing on it.

"Love always. Your friends," is scrawled across the right face of the rock.

"We will never forget," is on the left face, alongside three names -- Shannon, Murray, Darren.