A car driven by a 15-year-old and carrying four other children on their way to school slid off an icy highway into a pond Tuesday, killing all five occupants, authorities said.
Divers found the car in about 20 feet of water with the children still trapped inside. A witness saw the vehicle slide off the winding highway around 7:30 a.m., Idaho State Police spokesman Rick Ohnsman said.
Killed were driver Brooke Probst, 15, and her brother, Brandt, 12; Megan Walker, 15; and her brothers, Tyler, 14; and Kyle, 12, Ohnsman said.
“You don’t imagine these things happening,” said Taylor Madsen, 16, who went to the accident site Tuesday. Madsen, a junior at Emmett High School, said she was a friend of Brooke Probst and Megan Walker.
The telephone was busy at the Probst family’s home. No phone number was listed for the Walker family. The families lived in Sweet, an unincorporated area about 30 miles from Boise and about 10 miles from the accident site.
Drivers may be licensed at 15 in Idaho, with some restrictions, but lawmakers are considering a measure that would boost training requirements to curb above-average traffic fatality rates among the state’s youngest drivers.