Safety official: Fatal crash is tough lesson for teens
GRAND MOUND, Iowa — A fatal car accident near DeWitt on Tuesday that involved a 15-year-old boy driving improperly on a school permit serves as a reminder to young drivers and their parents about driving cautiously, a state public safety official said Wednesday.
The accident occurred at 2:47 p.m. Tuesday in the 2300 block of 320th Avenue. Easten Alter, 15, of Grand Mound, was driving a 2005 GMC Yukon southbound on the gravel road when he lost control of the vehicle, causing it to roll over. Two of his passengers, Dylan Hintz, 15, and Mitchell Ertz, 15, both of Grand Mound, were ejected. Ertz died later Tuesday at Genesis Medical Center-Rusholme Street Campus in Davenport.
Hintz, Alter and two other passengers, Joseph Kaczinski, 16, and Tucker Lawson, 15, both of Grand Mound, were taken to Genesis Medical Center-DeWitt. All four boys had been released from the hospital by Wednesday morning, a hospital spokesman said.
Alter was cited for violating the conditions of his school permit and failure to maintain control.
Parents whose children have school permits should tell them to wear their seat belts at all times and to limit distractions to the driver, such as cell phone use, loud music and having multiple passengers, said Jim Saunders, public information officer for the Iowa Department of Public Safety.
“They really need to be paying attention to their driving and focusing on that,” Saunders said.
Mitchell Emerson, 14, said he knows all the boys involved and had been best friends with Ertz, known as “Ertzy” to his friends, since he moved to Grand Mound about two years ago.
“We hung out all the time,” he said.
Emerson said the boys had been to the farm of Dan Smicker, the vocational agriculture teacher at Central Community High School in DeWitt, where Alter was keeping chickens as an FFA project, and were headed home when the accident occurred.
Emerson said Ertz worked with his grandfather mowing local cemeteries.
“He just worked on his lawn mowers for fun,” Emerson said. “It’s what he loved to do.”
Smicker said Wednesday that 320th Avenue had just been graded on Tuesday morning, leaving loose gravel on the road.
Ertz family members and friends were gathered at the family’s home in Grand Mound on Wednesday, but declined to comment.
Steven Martens can be contacted at (563) 659-2595 or smartens@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.