2 Hardin County teens die in 1-car crash

9/9/2008
BY MIKE SIGOV
BLADE STAFF WRITER

DUNKIRK, Ohio - Area school counselors, pastors, and educators met yesterday with Hardin Northern Local School students to counsel them just hours after two of their schoolmates were killed in a car crash.

Kaleb Allen, the driver, and Dylan Miller, the only passenger in the car, both of whom were 16 and from rural Dunkirk, were pronounced dead at the scene, troopers at the Ohio Highway Patrol's Findlay post said.

Kaleb was a junior at Hardin Northern High School, Dola, Ohio, and Dylan was a sophomore there. Dylan was on the school's football team, although he had not played this year because of an injury, Superintendent Larry Claypool said.

The crash occurred at

12:30 a.m. yesterday on Hardin County Road 30 in Blanchard Township, about a mile east of Blanchard Township Road 159, in northeastern Hardin County.

The boys' Volkswagen Jetta was westbound on Road 30 when it went off the south side of the road and struck a tree, troopers said.

Neither victim was wearing a seat belt, and the Miller youth was partially thrown from the vehicle, the patrol said.

Troopers said it was unclear why the boys were on the road by themselves so late at night. On Sundays, a curfew for teenagers their age starts at 10 p.m., according to the Hardin County Sheriff's Office.

Before classes started yesterday, the superintendent held a staff meeting with teachers "to make sure everybody had the correct information and there were no rumors floating," the superintendent said.

Then at 8:40 a.m. all the students from grades 6 through 12 were assembled in the gymnasium, where the superintendent explained what happened to Kaleb and Dylan and introduced the counselors and pastors from the community, who later talked to the grieving students.

Elementary school teachers talked to students in kindergarten through grade 5 about the accident, Mr. Claypool said.

Children who asked to go home were allowed to do so if they had parents' permission and there was somebody at home to be with them, the superintendent said.