Jackson Jambalaya

They were lucky to go off the north side of Spillway and into the Rez.

The guardrail on Upper Spillway Road, along the south side, has never been fixed since Spillway was converted from 2-way traffic to its current configuration.

It's a really bad accident waiting to happen.

Very fortunate results for a distracted driver. Cars can be replaced, lives, like Leigh Anne Ward's, can't. Please don't allow yourself or your friends to be a distracted driver.

Thanks for posting the photos. I used it as a teaching opportunity for my son tonight. The girls are fortunate to be alive, and that was his first question.....their health.

Can anyone update on the Ward case? Why has the guy not been charged? or has he been charged and I missed it? Has the accident report been made public? Do we know what he was "distracted" by and if other reports of his driving recklessly further up the road were true?

Those girls are so lucky to be alive or all in one piece.

I hope this will serve as a very good lesson for this young driver about serious accidents happen in the blink of an eye. A second or two of distraction is all it takes.

Thankful the girls are OK. Interesting FYI, the driver of the SUV is Jim Hood's daughter...

This Sunday on the way to church I fell in behind a young man that could not stay in the lane, drifting back and forth. Yes, he was texting. At one point we came to a small hill he move over into the lane and had someone been coming the other direction it would have been ugly. Finally we stopped at a light. He sat after it turned green, so to send a message I layed on my truck horn.

It scared him so bad his phone came flying out of his hand (very funny in sad sorta way), I had not realized his windows were down.

I gave him the two fingers pointing to the eyes and then to the road. I followed him for about a mile until my turn. He never move from the center of the lane!

Jim Hood's daughter? Can anyone confirm that? That might explain the lack of any name in any media report so far.

I know the girl's name and its not Hood.

My nephews go to UCS with the two girls involved. I was told Becca Hood was driving. She was definitely in the car.

The two girls names start with R and P. And neither of them is named Rebecca.

Well it was Becca Hood. The "R" is the other girl. No "P".

Oh really? Only problem with P is I know her aunt and grandmother. And she is the one who got out first and helped her friend get out. I've also got one pic of the other girl in her SUV when she got it, and it matches perfectly with her in the video.

How about we end the speculation and look up info on the tag number? And shouldn't there be an accident report?

So why did you take down the grandmother's post?

I stand corrected. Becca is best friends with Riley and it was initially assumed (reported to me) that Becca was with Riley b/c they are always together. It was Riley and Peyton.

I didn't take it down. Was never put on here.

And no more naming. These are juvies after all.

As for police reports, there is an exception in the law for minors. They will provide report but redact names.

There was a post from the grandmother over the weekend saying how glad she was that her granddaughter had kept calm and gotten the other girl out.

It's not there now.

I can't believe no one got hurt, but so grateful for it...Hopefully this will be a wake up to the kids...hopefully

Its there. READ.

Juvenile's names deserve to be protected when they are VICTIMS..

Not when they are acting like morons endangering other's lives as well as their own.

btw, the drivers name had already been reported, as it should be. NAME AND SHAME.

2:52 -- the grandmother's post was in response to KF's facebook post.

Anyway, this is the reason that my parents wouldn't let me drive with a friend in the car for the first year I had my license. Made me mad at the time, but in retrospect was a very good idea. And in "those days" (the 90s) we didn't have cell phones and iPods to add to the mix . . .

My grandparents got me a 1980 coupe deville. Seriously. Grandad said he wanted a bunch of metal around me in case I got in a wreck. I will sayone thing about that car, if I had gotten in a wreck, I would've felt sorry for the tree.

6:01pm: NAME AND SHAME.

That's a real constructive way of looking at things. Advocating the "shaming" of a 16 and 17 year-old over a BS one-car accident with no injuries.

Not much going on in your World, is it?

Curt,

Driving off into the reservoir is hardly BS status. The fact that there were no injuries is not a testament to the driver's superior handling skills (ha ha) but more along the lines of...sweet Jesus, that was a miracle.

Hmm, by Curt's rather strange logic 5 out of 6 fools who play Russian Roulette with a 6-shooter don't deserve to be called stupid either, or held up as public examples of what we don't want other kids to do. Only the one who dies is stupid, apparently.

Hey Curt,

They could have just as easily gone off the opposite side, flipping into oncoming traffic, killing not only themselves but innocent people who WEREN'T DRIVING LIKE IDIOTS. The fact that they went into the lake and didn't die is simply by the grace of god (whichever one you want to believe in).

Nobody has a problem with naming and shaming two morons for spray painting a football field, which has no potential to hurt anyone; yet a daddy's little princess should be protected even though she could have killed numerous people while acting like a dumbass behind the wheel of a 2 ton vehicle.

Seems that there's not much going on in your brain, Curt....

I agree with 8:15 & 5:19. This was NOT a BS little fender bender. Not by a long shot.

Could easily have taken someone's life, either theirs or some luckless victim in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This isn't something to be taken lightly, and if you have ever lost a loved one or friend to a careless driver, you would understand that.

I hope this was a lesson these girls will never forget.

I just have to wonder, how in the hell did they pierce a steel girder and land in the lake. I mean you would have to tumble or make a right hand turn.

The pictures don't show roll over damage.

How did this happen?

So, Who's the U-Boat Commander?

JB

KK - I drove by the site Thursday night before they repaired it and wondered the same thing. That barrier is there to prevent someone who falls asleep at the wheel from winding up in the water. If you drove head-on into the barrier I can see it giving way, but if you slide into it starting from a parallel path I can't see how a car can hit it hard enough to break it and go through. Maybe the momentum of a heavy SUV could do it.

KF, didn't you post something about the City of Ridgeland wanting to put up the LCD billboards along Spillway Rd. Kudo's for Ridgeland in their efforts to kill us all with distracted driving!! They can use the extra money from the billboards to pay for lawsuits! Money won't bring back the dead though.

I didn't say her driving was safe. My problem is with the calls to permanently smear a couple of kids over a traffic accident. It was an accident, nobody got hurt, get over it.

I wonder if any of you pious safety warriors who are so vociferously attacking these girls have ever driven carelessly, done a little speeding, yacked away on your cell phone, maybe even hopped behind the wheel after you've had one or two. This was an accident, pure and simple, and it could have happened to anyone.

As far as learning from the accident, I think it a safe bet that the event itself taught the appropriate lesson.

She should consider herself LUCKY she didn't crash head-on into someone and kill them. That doesn't make her driving skills any safer for the rest of us who share the road with this nimrod. If someone tries to kill someone, but shoots and misses, they get charged with attempted murder, not murder, but it doesn't make them any less evil because they're incompetent.

BTW the trauma surgeons no longer use the term "motor vehicle accident", instead using "motor vehicle collison", because there is no such thing as an "accident", just carelessness that allowed a preventable collision to occur.