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A special burden

They are the "ming gen zi," the "root of life" — the only root that carries the family name.

Each of the victims in the Urbana crash was an only child, the product of a strict one-child-per-family policy adopted in the late 1970s to control population in China, a country of more than 1.3 billion people.

"Be careful," Chunzhi Sun warned her daughter, 24-year-old Bing "Jo" Xue, every time she talked to her.

"It's a small town, very quiet, very safe," Jo would answer.

Jo shared a house on West Church Street in Urbana with five other Chinese students — most of them strangers when they arrived at this campus of 1,400 students the year before, but now inseparable friends. They wear blue jeans, adopt American names and appear to blend in effortlessly.

But they carry a special burden — and they understand why their parents are so overprotective. They are all they have, and their parents mortgage their futures to pay the $14,400 tuition for Urbana University's two-year MBA program — a virtual fortune for middle-class Chinese families.

Sun considered it a risk worth taking for her bright, hard-working daughter. "It was sort of an investment, yet it was definitely not a blind one, because we all felt she had rosy prospects, and we'd go broke to get her a better education," Sun said in a telephone interview from her home in Dalian, China.

In China, the only child is the focus not only of his or her parents but also two sets of grandparents, giving rise to the popular nicknames "Little Emperor" and "Little Empress."

Yet these Urbana students exhibited no such sense of entitlement. Bian worked for minimum wage at a Chinese restaurant to pay back the $5,500 his parents scraped together to buy a used Ford Taurus. They knew of Chinese students who bought cars for $2,000 to $3,000, but they figured the Taurus would be sturdier, more reliable, safer.

Bian took the Taurus out that Thursday morning, in the middle of spring break, for a marathon day of outlet shopping. He was joined on the long-anticipated outing by his roommates Jo and Zoe. Another roommate, Donghai "John" Zhao, begged off; he wanted to sleep in.

At 5:20 p.m. Zoe called Zhao, pleased with her purchase of baby clothes for her nephew. "We aren't far from home," she said, promising she wouldn't be late for her 6:30 shift at the Mayflower Chinese restaurant in Urbana. When the call ended, Zhao expected to see them any minute.

Then, nothing. At first, the roommates at home reassured themselves with talk of traffic jams. But they grew increasingly uneasy after Zoe missed the start of her shift. The conscientious student often stayed up well past midnight poring over class notes with Jo; she wasn't one to shirk an obligation.

Zhao called the cell phones of all three; nobody picked up.

"We wanted to go out looking for them, we wanted to find them, but we did not know the American ways of dealing with these things," he said.

Not far away, Wayne and Linda Spiegel also spent an anxious evening in their Urbana home.

Linda couldn't take her usual route home; Urbana Road was completely blocked. When she finally made it home, she described the nine-car pileup in one word: carnage.

The couple flashed back to the worst day of their lives. It was a leisurely Saturday in 1994 when a 21-year-old driver crossed the yellow line as he crested a hill on Ohio 560 north of Urbana.

Spiegel's mother and brother died instantly in the crash.

So the Spiegels felt stunned — yet hardly surprised — when they learned the identity of the 34-year-old man who caused the March 8, 2007, accident on Urbana Road.

Spiegel called his brother and sister with the distressing news: "Jason Skaggs has done it again."

Skaggs, who is scheduled to stand trial July 23 on charges of aggravated vehicular homicide and aggravated vehicular assault stemming from the crash, is in the Clark County Jail. He declined requests to be interviewed, but his lawyer, Clark County public defender James Marshall, said: "What has happened here is tragic. This has been very difficult for him. Jason is epileptic. It's our contention, it's Jason's belief, that he had an epileptic seizure prior to the accident."

An uncanny coincidence

In one of those uncanny small-town coincidences, Wayne Spiegel met Jason Skaggs years before he caused the accident that killed his mother and brother.

In fact, he hired him.

Spiegel, then manager of the Urbana Kroger, hired Skaggs as a part-time grocery clerk at the recommendation of his sister Alicia, a model employee. But Skaggs proved to be difficult, hot-headed. He eventually lost his job, and Spiegel figured he wasn't his problem anymore.

That was before April 9, 1994.

The afternoon started out with the most mundane, least tragic of accidents: a fender-bender. A 23-year-old Urbana woman named Stephanie Walborn pulled into the path of the 21-year-old Skaggs, hitting his 1990 blue Firebird.

The damage turned out to be minor, but Walborn said Skaggs started cursing at her and the police officer who arrived on the scene. He flung plastic pieces of the broken fender across the street.

Walborn, terrified, cowered beside the police officer as he took the report and ticketed her for her part in the accident. "I'll never forget how angry Jason was over that fender-bender," she said. "He was still very angry when he pulled away. He said he was in a hurry and had to go to pick up his girlfriend."

A half-hour later, around 3:30 p.m., Skaggs was speeding along Ohio 760, heading north. Spiegel, with three members of his family in the car, was coming in the opposite direction. His brother Jim, 53, and mother Lucy, 79, drove down from Bucyrus, where they shared a home together. They planned to browse the Toy Train Hobbies shop in Kettering, a favorite haunt for Spiegel and his son Phillip. The 12-year-old Phillip couldn't wait to show it off to his Uncle Jim for the first time.

They had been on the road only a few minutes when Jim, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned around to say something to his mother.

BAM!

The Firebird seemed to come out of nowhere as Skaggs attempted to pass another car around a blind curve on a hill.

It was over in less than a second. Spiegel's steering wheel busted, bruising his chest. He broke ribs from the jolt of his seat belt against his body. His ankle was mangled, and he had a broken nose. But he could walk — barely.

"Jim! Jim!" he called out to his brother. No answer.

"I want out!" Phillip cried.

Spiegel cautioned, "Phillip, stay still, I know help is coming."

Skaggs stumbled out of the Firebird and threw himself on the ground, pounding the gravel in rage. Spiegel said Skaggs never lifted himself up to help, or to see if they were OK.

Phillip blacked out and would remember nothing of the crash when he regained consciousness. His grandmother lay motionless where she had been thrown under the driver's seat. "I know this didn't really happen," recalled Phillip, now 26, "but I have this memory of Grandma looking at me and saying, 'Things are going to be OK.' "

Phillip suffered a broken arm and internal injuries, his seat belt probably saving his life. "Where are Grandma and Uncle Jim?" he asked continually during his two weeks in the hospital. "They ought to be visiting me."

Again and again, his parents told him, "Grandma and Uncle Jim are dead."

"It wasn't until I saw it in the newspaper, in black and white, that I finally understood," Phillip said.

Nine months

for two lives

Stephanie Walborn said Skaggs left menacing messages on her voicemail after the accident: "He said he wished it had been me who died, instead of the Spiegel family," she said. "He told me that what happened was my fault — that if he hadn't gotten into the fender-bender with me, he wouldn't have gotten into the accident with them."

In court documents and court appearances, however, Skaggs appeared contrite. In October 1994, he pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and aggravated vehicular homicide and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison. He didn't face a stiffer sentence, in part because he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol and had no criminal history, according to Champaign County Prosecutor Nick Selvaggio.

Skaggs served a total of nine months. In March 1995, he petitioned for shock probation, a type of early release so called because prison "shocks" one's sensibilities. In a letter to Champaign County Common Pleas Judge Roger Wilson, Skaggs wrote, "I realize I made a bad judgment call when passing the slow-moving vehicle, but feel this could have happened to anybody."

Skaggs also wrote that he wanted to marry his fiancee and find a job: "I am scared that being locked up for any length of time may change some of my future plans."

Wilson granted Skaggs five years' shock probation and suspended his license until 2000. "It took me longer than nine months to rebuild my life," Spiegel says angrily. "It seems like so little to lose for killing two people."

After the crash, Linda Spiegel folded her beauty-shop business so she could play nursemaid to her husband and son, ferrying them to endless doctor appointments.

Phillip, a sixth-grader, returned to school after a month but was not allowed to play football in seventh grade. "I was really disappointed, because I had finally talked my parents into it," he recalled.

Spiegel is thankful that his son has no lasting physical problems, that his life hasn't been derailed. Phillip is married, owns a home and has a steady job as a factory floor worker in Columbus. But he misses his grandmother and his uncle: "I would love their opinions on different things in life. Grandma was the kind of person who could sugarcoat things but get you the truth at the same time," he says.

Spiegel went back to his job at the Kroger in Urbana after only a few weeks, but he couldn't concentrate. "It got in the way of my being a good manager," he said. "When I was at work, I was also somewhere else." Eventually, he was demoted to assistant manager.

He still walks with a slight limp, and his ribs hurt when he lifts things. The psychological wounds cut deeper. "At every event there are two empty chairs," he said. "Mom was a vibrant, peppy person. She always came to graduations and weddings and baby showers."

Authorities assured him he played no part in that accident, but he is tormented by the question, "What could I have done differently?"

"I have carried that baggage for 14 years," he said. "It eats at you."

Spiegel doesn't consider himself a vengeful person, but his most fervent prayer is that the man who killed his family never gets behind the wheel of a car again: "I don't know if you can make any road wide enough to accommodate someone like Jason Skaggs," he said.

Since 2002, Skaggs had accrued 11 points against his license for a variety of violations, from speeding to running his car off the road. On Feb. 5, 2007 — less than five weeks before the triple fatality — he was clocked driving 91 mph in a 65 mph zone. He pleaded guilty.

Lawmakers have revamped laws governing good behavior and license suspension since 1994. The good behavior provision was repealed, and anyone convicted of vehicular homicide today faces a mandatory license suspension from three years to life.

Spiegel believes the law is still inadequate.

"What really rankles is that he got his license back," he said. "Didn't anybody see that bomb ticking?"

No one did. Certainly not any of the drivers waiting on the three-way stoplight at Urbana and Moorefield roads on March 8, 2007.

5:30 p.m.

Jonathan Wilkerson's gold Crown Victoria was one of five cars stopped at the intersection as they headed north on Urbana Road, otherwise known as Ohio 72. His car radio had gone dead, but he kept singing along to the gospel tune.

"That lady probably thinks I'm crazy," he thought, glancing sheepishly at the driver in the right lane. Then he idly inspected a pair of shoe inserts he had just purchased at a drug store.

Carolyn Davis, a bank teller who had just left work, was behind Wilkerson, fretting about being late for her hair appointment. She didn't notice the car behind her, and it would be hours before she would learn that the unseen vehicle contained three young college students from China, returning to Urbana University from a shopping trip.

As she neared the group of cars from behind, Julia Skrlac saw a streaking vehicle grow larger in her rearview mirror. Skrlac, a Miami Valley Hospital nurse, quickly pulled over and watched as a blue Chevy Tahoe, driven by Jason Skaggs, raced toward the intersection without braking, she told the Ohio Highway Patrol.

Patrol records, culled from eyewitness accounts, provide a detailed description of the catastrophic chain reaction that came next.

Dale Johnson, who had just stopped at the red light in his Mercury Mountaineer, said that he saw the Tahoe flash by his driver's side window and that Skaggs glanced over at him just as the Tahoe clipped the Mountaineer on the front left side. The Tahoe careened further into the right lane, heading straight for the Buick Skylark that was stopped in front of Johnson.

The stoplight flashed green, but Leah Coy barely had lifted her foot off the Skylark's brake when she heard a "shotgun blast" behind her. She braced for the impact as she saw Johnson's Mountaineer barreling her way. The Tahoe slammed Coy's Skylark and went airborne, a launch powered by what investigators would later say was sheer speed: 98 mph.

Wilkerson heard a thunderous boom that sounded and felt "like a plane falling out of the air," he told the patrol.

Bian's Taurus instantly was pancaked between the Tahoe and Carolyn Davis' gold Chrysler. Davis' car then rammed Wilkerson's, as well as another car in the right lane. The force propelled Wilkerson's Crown Victoria into the red Ford F-150 in front of him, knocking the massive pickup truck through the intersection like a pool ball.

Amid clouds of smoke and spilling vehicle fluid, glass shattered, steel frames buckled and pieces of metal and plastic flew through the air.

There were screams.

Then, said Davis, a "calmness and peacefulness" settled in, as if the whole world had come to a stop.

All that remained in the stillness was the ominous blaring of a car horn. It was coming from the Taurus.

'Did I cause this accident?'

A vaporous odor stung Jonathan Wilkerson's nose. Gasoline. He had just filled his tank. "I have to get out of the car," he told himself.

Wilkerson wrestled with the driver's side door but it wouldn't budge. "I'm going to die," he thought.

Help came in the form of a stranger, a woman, who seemed to materialize out of nowhere. She pulled Wilkerson's door open and helped him out of the car as he struggled to gain his feet. His leg muscles locked up and he felt a pain in his back like someone had driven a knife into it.

As Wilkerson lay in the median strip, waiting for an ambulance, he prayed out loud, hoping to stay conscious. "I was stuck on blessing God," he said.

Davis remembers nothing about the crash. When she came to her senses, she remembered thinking her feet were cold — the impact of the crash had knocked her shoes off — and she patted her feet along the floorboard feeling about for her missing shoes.

Davis had no idea of the extent of her injuries — a broken neck, crushed vertebrae and fractured ankle. She asked someone to call her husband, then the hair stylist.

Within minutes, the Jaws of Life cut her out of the car, and she was taken by helicopter to Miami Valley Hospital.

Witnesses rushed to assist Skaggs, trapped under the dashboard of the Tahoe.

Candy Rinehart was one of them. She was driving north on Urbana Road when she came upon the wall of twisted metal at the Moorefield Road intersection. In her statement to the Highway Patrol, she said Skaggs was agitated, struggling to free himself.

"Did I cause this accident?" he asked.

Rinehart tried to calm him, but he thrashed his head from side to side. "Did I cause the accident?" he asked again.

After a few minutes, he seemed to settle down, though Rinehart said he still seemed dazed. She asked for his name.

"Jason," he told her.

No leads

As the hours wore on, the roommates of Jin "Jack" Bian, Bing "Jo" Xue and Yan "Zoe" Sun became frantic inside their rented house near the campus of Urbana University. Their American counterparts probably wouldn't blink if their friends showed up late from a shopping trip or missed a work shift.

But Donghai Zhao knew something was terribly wrong. Despite Zoe's penchant for joke-telling and her love of Chinese pop music, Zhao knew she would never miss a work shift.

He called the highway patrol, local hospitals, anyone he could think of. Nobody had any leads.

Word spread about their friends who were missing, and the university's tight-knit community of Chinese students began gathering at the Student Union. Finally, a tip came in from a customer at the Mayflower Chinese restaurant, where Zoe had failed to report for her 6:30 shift. "I just saw a TV report about an accident near Dayton," he said. "You should check it out."

The students hovered in front of a television at the Student Union, waiting for the 11 o'clock news.

The customer had been right; an accident had taken place less than eight miles from campus. But "accident" hardly seemed an adequate description for the mayhem unfolding on the TV screen. "As I was watching the news, I felt like there was a heavy stone upon my heart," Zhao recalled. "I had never seen such a terrible accident scene, even in TV dramas and movies."

But Channel 7 didn't broadcast the names of the three victims. The students still had hope their friends were being treated at a local hospital.

Then they saw the image of a car, crushed like soda can, with only the license plate recognizable: EAQ2671.

It was Bian's plate number.