By Christopher Wink | Feb. 5, 2008 | The Temple News
She was young and energetic and fun.
And then she was dead. Ejected through a windshield and pronounced dead on the pavement of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, amid broken glass and unlived expectations.
It is so rare that we are affected by what we expect. Much more often it is what blindsides us on an otherwise anonymous trip home.
Ciara Deprill was born on Aug. 20, 1986. Less than 7,000 days later, in the dark and forgotten morning hours of Feb. 3, 2006, she had other places to be.
It became a story. Deprill was riding shotgun with Dreamah Knoll, who was driving with a blood alcohol level a few ticks over the legal limit. They were coming back to the city, going westbound on the Ben Franklin. Those lanes can seem so narrow. A concrete barrier can change so many things.
Deprill is gone, but what might be worse is the risk of losing Knoll. There is no pain like the pain of those who survive. Those who are granted the privilege of living with unwarranted guilt and irreversible anguish.