Thursday, 4:30 PM
Teens die hours apart at same spot
April Simpson, Globe Staff
WEST WARWICK, R.I. -- Hours after their friend died, a group gathered to construct a memorial around the telephone pole 14-year-old Darien Plass had rammed his mother’s van into just 200 yards from his home.
The mourners would disperse late Friday, but Andrew Coit stayed to pray and strum a few more songs on his acoustic guitar. About 4 a.m. Saturday, police found Coit, 18, lying next to the pole, the apparent victim of a fatal hit-and-run. Police do not have suspects and are asking anyone with information to come forward.
The deaths have traumatized the community.
"How can you hit a person, and drive away?" Coit’s mother, Christa Mills, said Sunday, choking back tears during a telephone interview.
Friends and relatives say the teenagers, who lived within a half-mile of each other, had been trying to turn their lives around. Plass, who had previously attended West Warwick High School, started attending The Ocean Tides School for at-risk boys last week.
"I’ve never seen Darien go to school and do his work right there," said Rob Rose, 15, who huddled with friends Sunday in Plass’s kitchen.
Coit, a senior at Coventry High School, had secured a part-time job at a Home Depot to save money for the birth of his first child due in May, a boy he and his girlfriend had planned to name Andrew Alan.
"Andrew just wanted everything to fall into place," the girlfriend, Meaghan Reynolds, 17, said in a telephone interview.
An ultrasound picture of Reynolds’s unborn child was among numerous pictures, signed T-shirts, and markings posted Sunday on the telephone pole where a steady stream of young people came to mourn.
Coventry High students remembered Coit as a go-getter who had immersed himself in theater and played Willard Hewitt in a recent school production of "Footloose." They described him as a gangly young man with a thin mustache that grew in patches.
"I asked him why he never shaved it off, and he said because 'I’d look weird,'" said Matt Addington, 16, who was among those at the makeshift memorial.
Wearing a photo of Plass around her neck, Britney Clark, 14, said she has fond memories of riding around West Warwick with him, the pair singing along to songs on the radio.
"His afro, we’d always crack on it," Clark said, as she stood among the mourners. "It was so big. We were always telling him if anyone tried to hit him in the head with something, it would probably bounce off."
About a half-dozen of Plass’s friends had gathered at his home Friday, a typical night for the teens who would often listen to music and play Xbox video games in Plass’s second-floor bedroom. Rose estimated that Plass drank about 20 shots straight from a bottle of Captain Morgan Rum.
Plass’s mother, Tina, said her son took the keys to her Ford van. Rose said he and another friend tried to stop Plass from driving, but Plass insisted on going for a drive.
He said Plass made two trips through the neighborhood before returning to his home for the last time.
"I reached in the car, and I had him by his shirt, and he just started going in reverse faster, so I let go of his shirt," Rose said. "The third time, he was just going crazy fast."
Rose said he saw Plass’s van veer onto a curb before crashing into the pole. Rose said he ran to the vehicle, where Plass repeatedly uttered "My boy."
Tina Plass said she lost her oldest son last year to encephalitis. The death took a toll on Darien, who she advised not to drink as an answer to his problems.
She said she hopes teenagers learn from her son’s mistake.
"Don’t drink and drive," Plass said. "Your life is more important."
April Simpson can be reached at asimpson@globe.com.
