Four members of the Grande Prairie Composite Warriors high school football team were killed by an alleged drunk driver. It is the second time teenage football players have been killed in Alberta within a week on the roads. In the other accident, initial investigations pointed to speed and inexperience, not alcohol.
A 21-year-old man has been charged with 11 offences, including failure to remain at the scene of the accident.
The principal of Grande Prairie Composite High School said a semi-final game slated for next weekend will go ahead. “We have to be courageous,” Rick Gilson, who is also the football coach, quietly told his Warriors squad.
Police were called at 12:06 a.m. after a pickup truck driven by a 21-year-old man collided with a car carrying five male teens, said RCMP Cpl. Carol McKinley.
The teens, all students at Grande Prairie Composite high school, were driving on Highway 668, an industrial road, about two kilometres east of Highway 40 when the vehicles collided. Their Mercury Sable was struck in what police allege was a hit-and-run by a GMC Sierra pickup truck.
Early Saturday morning, just after midnight, Warrior football teammates – Walter Borden-Wilkins, 15; Tanner Hildebrand, 15; Vincent Stover, 16; Matthew Deller; and Zachary Judd, 15 – were heading home from a party. They had played an inter-squad game earlier that afternoon and posed for a team photo.
Only Zachary Judd survived. He was taken by air ambulance for medical care in an Edmonton hospital where he was listed as critically injured, but stable.
Police have charged a local man, 21-year-old Brenden Holubowich, with 11 offences.
He faces four counts of impaired driving causing death and four counts of causing death by operating a motor vehicle while over the 0.08 blood alcohol limit. He also faces three more charges of impaired driving causing bodily harm, causing bodily harm by operating a vehicle while over the legal limit and failing to remain at the scene of an accident.
Tanner Hildebrand, 15
Walter Borden-Wilkins, 15
Vincent Stover, 16
Matthew Deller, 16
Zachary Judd, 15
Grande Prairie Composite High School is one of two high schools in Grande Prairie, and the only public secondary school in the city.
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