Another senseless tragedy

The service was supposed to start at 3 p.m.

But at 3, the crowd in the chapel at McLaurin's in Clayton was told it would be another 15 minutes because folks were still lined up to see Shannon Adkins' parents, Doug and Ernestine.

It was standing room only in the chapel. The crowd spilled into the hallway, packed full of Shannon's friends, and into side rooms.

The chapel was too small to hold the love people had for Shannon.

I wish I could claim credit for that line. It was something the Rev. Keith DeBord said as he tried to comfort the hundreds who showed up Tuesday.

Shannon Nicole Adkins died late Saturday while driving home on a road off N.C. 42 near Clayton. She was hit head-on by a pickup truck driven by a woman who was charged with felony death by motor vehicle, an element of which includes driving while intoxicated.

Shannon, 18, became the 27th Johnston teen to die in a car wreck since the beginning of 2006. My county has the second-highest number of teen traffic fatalities in the state for that period.

Shannon wanted to do something about that. She used her senior project at Clayton High to try to figure out why so many young drivers were dying in Johnston. She can't tell you now, but I can.

Johnston has lots of curvy, rural roads with narrow shoulders. Many carry more traffic than they should. The population is up more than 93 percent since 1990. Even the so-called main roads, like N.C. 42, are scary at night.

Johnston officials, alarmed by the teen death toll, are trying to do something, anything. County Commissioner Tony Braswell is holding a meeting of highway, school and law enforcement officials tonight in Smithfield, 7:30 at the Ag Center.

But there's another problem. Until recently, Johnston hadn't done all it could to make people think twice before they got behind the wheel drunk. In 2006, Johnston prosecutors voluntarily dismissed about 43 percent of all impaired-driving charges, compared to 14 percent statewide.

I'm not fool enough to think that all drunken drivers calculate their chances of getting their cases tossed before they get behind the wheel. But what if Johnston had a tradition of being very tough on DWIs? The word would have gotten around, believe me.

Fortunately, District Attorney Susan Doyle, who took office last year, has clamped down on dismissals. And last month, a special DWI court opened in Smithfield, funded by a state grant she secured. It is run by out-of-town judges. The grant runs out next fall, but she told me she'll apply for an extension. This isn't a permanent solution, but it will help Johnston get tough on DWIs.

Meanwhile, the Adkinses are left to deal with their loss. Mrs. Adkins was at home Wednesday, reading a paper that Shannon had written for a class at Wayne Community College, where she was studying criminal justice. It was a paper on the causes and consequences of car wrecks, and Shannon concluded that, more often than not, the innocent motorists hit by drunken drivers were the ones who didn't survive.

Shannon turned it in Friday, and her instructor brought it by the funeral. It had comments on some of the pages, but not all, Mrs. Adkins said, like the grading was suddenly interrupted. She was crying as she read me the essay by her only child.

"Hug your babies," she told me as we said goodbye.