Part one of a two-part story

Jessica Duran remembers seeing a pair of headlights.

She remembers looking back and seeing the white pickup truck’s lights coming down the slope of 3900 N Road, eight miles west of Twin Falls, in the early morning dark and she remembers turning back around and seeing the road turn to the left and then the field to her right and the first instant of rolling and then nothing.

She doesn’t remember waking, and the ride in the ambulance is a blur, but she remembers everything about the hospital and asking, “Where’s Devon and Ryan?” over and over again, getting mad when the nurse at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Regional Medical Center wouldn’t say.

And she can’t forget when the nurse finally told her that the boys didn’t make it.

“I just didn’t believe her,” Duran said. “I said, ‘No, that’s not true.’”

Duran, 19, is the only survivor from the Sept. 12 car accident that took the lives of fellow Coeur d’Alene High School graduates and College of Southern Idaho students Ryan Reinhardt, 18, and Devon Austin, 19.

Duran and Austin had been dating for three years. Reinhardt and Austin had been childhood friends. All were athletes at Coeur d’Alene High and Austin, who had been drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 45th round last June, was at CSI, located in Twin Falls, on a baseball scholarship.

Reinhardt and Austin died at the scene of the accident around 1 a.m. and what’s a fog for Duran is waking slowly as the emergency responders hauled her to the hospital and saying, ‘We were being chased, we were being chased,’ over and over again.

They were run down by another vehicle after the Coeur d’Alene teenagers left a party, she told emergency responders.

“We saw lights behind us,” Duran told The Press in an interview earlier this month about the accident that morning, and the investigation since. “It was probably in like less than a minute they were right up on us. I turned around and it was Kade’s white truck. I’d seen his truck at the school before.”

Kade is Kade Laughlin, 20, a CSI student whom Duran knew from school.

It was Laughlin’s party the Coeur d’Alene teenagers had attended that night, she said, his friends with whom they had argued moments before leaving, and it was Laughlin’s Ford F150 pickup truck Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office reports identified later that morning as having a possible connection to the crash when they arrested Laughlin for driving under the influence.

“They had got right on us and then they pulled up next to us and that’s when I saw like probably four or five guys in the back of the truck,” Duran said. “So we started accelerating and they were right next to us and that’s when they were kind of swerving back and forth toward our car.”

The truck got closer with each swerve, and Duran remembers looking down and seeing the speedometer hit 80 mph and she remembers how the truck whizzed past the Camry and hit its brakes to get Reinhardt to stop — only Reinhardt drove off the road through a field to avoid it.

But the truck was there again, side by side again, and Reinhardt hit his brakes this time as the truck moved past, then he sped away. But there were the headlights behind them again, she said, always behind them.

“Dude we’re in a roadrage omygosh,” Austin text messaged friend Coty Cummings at 12:57 a.m., minutes before the Camry fell from the road, according to forwarded copies of the messages shared with The Press.

“(Expletive) dude we’re going 100,” Austin messaged Cummings two minutes later.

It lasted only a few miles, for a few minutes, and before 3900 N Road connects to U.S. Highway 30 at a 15 mph curve, the road slopes down.

The truck had slowed down leading to the curve, Duran said. But the Coeur d’Alene teenagers didn’t know about the curve. They hadn’t seen the signs. They had gotten lost on their way out to the party, and hadn’t taken that road in.

Then Duran remembers turning back around.

“I remember telling Ryan we had to turn left,” said Duran, who suffered a broken hand in the accident. She now attends North Idaho College. “I just remember seeing the turn and then I remember a field on my right.”

After the accident

For the Coeur d’Alene families, it had seemed like an open and shut case at first.

When they learned Laughlin had been arrested for driving under the influence near his house later that morning, it seemed it would only be a matter of time before charges were filed.

Five months later, they’re still waiting.

“It’s been agony,” said Paula Austin, Devon’s mother. “Now we’re passing the day waiting for that call; every day we’re waiting for something to happen.

“That’s been our life: ‘Have you heard anything?’”

It wasn’t until days after receiving the news about the accident that the families learned the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office was investigating a possible chase preceeding it.

Blindsided, said Laura Wilson, Reinhardt’s mother, who learned from the funeral director.

“Overwhelmed,” she said.

The difference from hearing about a single-car accident to a possible pursuit is almost more than a mother can bear; the difference of knowing and not knowing, the realization that the young men’s last moments were in fear, rather than merely oblivious.

“Now we know his last moments are in terror,” Paula Austin said of her son.

“From tragic accident to a horrific nightmare,” Wilson said. “They didn’t know where they were going. They were trying to get away from those other kids. That gives parents nightmares at night.”

But with the shock of the difference came the comfort that the investigation was making headway, the families said. The suspected truck driver Duran had pointed out was arrested, and the families said the investigators told them they were piecing together who else was involved.

They said the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office told them some of the people at the party had admitted to being involved, and that all they needed to do was prove the before and after.

By November, Twin Falls Sheriff’s deputy Brent Hilliard, working on the case since its get-go, had told the families a grand jury could be coming.

The grand jury didn’t happen, and Hilliard was promoted off the case Jan. 7 to captain of patrol. Even before that, communication between authorities and the families was dwindling, the families said.

“I can understand it’s taken a long time to get answers,” said Grant Loebs, Twin Falls County prosecutor. “All I can say is, it takes as long as it takes, and we have to be thorough.”

Records requests to the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office were denied pending the investigation. The prosecutor’s office said the investigation has progressed in the last month, and could finish by the end of the month.

But each day, it’s hard not to lose a little hope, the families said.

Five months of not knowing anything has been hard to handle.

“I’m afraid in the end it’s going to be a big disappointment,” Wilson said. “That’s kind of how I’m starting to feel the last couple of days. It’s been pretty tough with the realization that nothing’s happened.”

The party

There’d been an argument about plastic cups.

The Coeur d’Alene teenagers had been at Laughlin’s party maybe 10 minutes before they wanted to leave, Duran said.

Only she knew Laughlin from school, and not very well, she said. It was weeks into the Coeur d’Alene teenagers’ first year of college, and Reinhardt and Austin didn’t know any of the dozen or so people at the house party in Filer, around eight miles west of Twin Falls.

“We just stood in the kitchen the whole time and it was really awkward,” Duran said.

Investigators told the families that some of the people there were 25 or 26 years old, they said. And Laughlin’s text messages, which have been turned over to authorities, inviting and directing Duran to the party included warnings that Duran’s friends shouldn’t act up or instigate anything, she said.

“I was like, what are you talking about?’” Duran said. “My guys don’t fight.”

At the party, they were offered a drink, a shot of Jaegermeister from a shampoo-style pump bottle, Duran said, but the bottle turned out to be empty.

Duran declined to comment on any alcohol factor that night, pending the investigation, other than to say that the Coeur d’Alene teenagers didn’t drink at the party. Request for reports pertaining to the investigation were denied by the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office.

After 10 minutes in the kitchen, after 12:30 a.m., they decided to leave.

Either Reinhardt or Austin or both of them took with them a decorative plastic cup they’d planned on using, Duran said.

They didn’t think anything of it, Duran said, since they were plastic and there were so many of them there.

But they were confronted, she said.

They apologized and put the cups back, she said.

“They put the cups back and walked outside and a few of the boys stood up and were calling us out, saying ‘You guys stole stuff,’ you know, ‘What else did you guys take?’” Duran said.

Nothing, she said the teenagers answered.

“Then all of the sudden probably five of the boys had walked out behind us, yelling at us, cussing at us, accusing us of stealing,” she said. “They had said something about their expensive jewelry, their valuables, or something like that.”

The situation calmed without a physical altercation, Duran said, and the Coeur d’Alene teenagers drove away from the house peacefully, without being pursued.

When Reinhardt pulled out of the driveway, he turned the wrong way, Duran said. They realized the mistake and turned around, passing the house again.

Nothing was happening.

They stopped a little later — the house still in sight — so Reinhardt could relieve himself.

Nothing, she said, no yelling or communication between the car and the people still back at the party.

Then they started down the road again, turning left onto 3900 N Road.

Then headlights, in the distance at first, were behind them.

Monday: Facing questions that might never be answered.