Part two of a two-part series

From part one: Around 1 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 12, Coeur d'Alene teenagers and College of Southern Idaho students, Ryan Reinhardt and Devon Austin, died in a single-vehicle accident on a rural road eight miles west of Twin Falls. Austin's girlfriend, Jessica Duran, survived the accident and told authorities they were chased by a truckload of people after they left a party. Kade Laughlin was identified by Duran as the alleged chaser. He was arrested later that morning for DUI. But five months later, nobody has been charged with anything relating to the crash. And questions about what happened early that Sunday morning are still unanswered.

Twin Falls County prosecutor Grant Loebs wouldn't say whether Kade Laughlin's DUI arrest is connected to the investigation, other than he was arrested the morning of the accident. But Loebs did say a second vehicle had been at the forefront of the investigation since the beginning.

According to a Twin Falls County sheriff's report from the DUI arrest, Laughlin was pulled over around 2:50 a.m. on E. 3900 N Road, a few miles from the scene of the accident.

That report said the truck and Laughlin had been identified as possibly having a connection to the accident, and that the truck had "attempted to elude" for a short time after being flashed by deputies.

"It's a fairly complex case because a lot of people have some information," Loebs said.

"The problem, of course, is just being in the truck doesn't mean you're involved in anything criminal."

Laughlin, and his listed attorney, R. Keith Roark, didn't return messages from The Press.

Laughlin pleaded guilty to DUI last week, and is scheduled for sentencing March 8, authorities said.

A breathalyzer test indicated Laughlin had a blood alcohol range of .153-.149, according to the DUI arrest report. In Idaho, .08 and above is legally intoxicated.

Loebs couldn't comment on the specifics of the case other than to say up to 20 people will be interviewed by the time it concludes. Some of the people involved know a lot, some a little, and around six more "key individuals" need to be questioned before the case wraps up.

Speed and alcohol have also been investigated since the beginning.

"This is a case where there were a lot of young people involved," Loebs said. "It stems from a party where there was a lot of drinking. It appears that most the people involved were drinking in some degree or another."

The three Coeur d'Alene teenagers weren't wearing seat belts.

Duran declined to comment on any alcohol factor, pending the investigation, other than to say that the Coeur d'Alene teenagers didn't drink at the party.

For the families, that doesn't change how they feel.

They believe their sons would still be alive if they hadn't been chased.

"There's never going to be closure because Ryan is gone," Wilson said. "Our lives are forever changed. Nothing will ever be the same, feel the same.

"I want, not only the kids in the accident to know, but all people to know they need to be accountable for their actions, that things like this can happen. Those kids may not have set out at the chase to kill two kids, but being reckless and not thinking, it can happen. And as much as it happened to our kids, it could happen to anybody's kids."

Phone records, including text messages inviting the teens to the party, have been turned over to investigators, the families said.

Loebs said nothing that has happened during the investigation would jeopardize it.

Twin Falls Sheriff's deputy Brent Hilliard, who had been working on the case since its get-go, was promoted to captain of patrol, which oversees patrol and investigation.

Hilliard had told the Coeur d'Alene families last fall that a grand jury could be called, the families said.

That grand jury didn't happened, but Lori Stewart, public information officer for the Twin Falls County Sheriff's Office, said Hilliard's promotion was part of a three-position shift in the department. It didn't have anything to do with any one investigation, she said.

"It's proceeding well," Loebs said. "Progress has been made in the last month."

The Agony

In Coeur d'Alene, the rooms are filled, yet empty.

In Reinhardt's, there's a quilt on his bed made from T-shirts he used to wear, a poster with his football number hanging on the wall, love notes, well-wishes, prayers sprawled across it.

On a dresser in the basement level of the Ninth Street bedroom, there's a blue wrestling mask he wore everywhere, to basketball games, around the house and every day on vacation after he bought it on a family vacation to Mexico.

In Austin's downstairs bedroom on Bristol Avenue, he too has a quilt, T-shirts stitched together now resting across his bed. On his wall are pictures and newspaper clippings, a collection of baseball achievements that landed the Chicago Cubs draft pick his awards, his scholarship.

Downstairs on a poster hangs his baseball number, too, covered with love notes, well-wishes, prayers.

"We truly believed he was going to play baseball one day," Paula Austin said of her son's future.

Charges wouldn't bring the boys back, the families understand.

They won't fill the sick, empty feeling that comes knowing lives will never be the same again.

But it could be a small step to closure, they said. There is a small peace knowing people are held accountable, and it could answer the unknown.

The families learned a third party had reported the accident to emergency crews.

Did the chasers not see? Did they see and leave? Who could have been involved? And did the DUI arrest happen because the truck was checking up on the crash?

"It's hard being over here and not knowing," Paula Austin said, 500 miles away from the investigation.

After communication with authorities had slowed, Paula Austin along with Coeur d'Alene High School baseball coach Nick Rook in February wrote letters to the editor of the Twin Falls newspaper, the Times-News, asking that the case not be swept under the rug.

Paula Austin said she received e-mails from well wishers in Twin Falls after the letters were posted online. Chelsey Babington, a resident of nearby Buhl, wrote a letter to the editor of The Press stating that she wasn't involved in the case, but very close to it. Her letter said that drunken driving was the chief cause of the accident.

Contacted later, Babington told The Press in an e-mail that the people suspected of being involved in the chase aren't at fault for causing the accident. She declined further comment, but said she would pass along word to see if any of the people associated with the case wanted to be interviewed. She then e-mailed to say they declined, pending the investigation.

In the meantime, each day that ends is a reminder that five months have passed, plus another day.

"It's hanging on by a thread," Wilson said. "It's trying to get through the next hour. There's nothing about days or weeks or months anymore; it's just minute to minute for us."

"It's hard to believe that he'll never walk through our front door again," she said of Ryan. "We took him and dropped him off and three weeks later this is what we're faced with."